Roper building $28M office park in Ladson

Roper St. Francis employees sign a whitewashed pile that will be used in the companys new office park, which is scheduled to open in spring 2016. (Photo/Ashley Heffernan)

By Ashley Heffernan aheffernan@scbiznews.com Published Nov. 17, 2014

Leaders from Roper St. Francis held a ceremonial beam signing Thursday for their new, 130,000-square-foot office building in Ladson.

Employees who are expected to move into the building in spring 2016 visited the construction site at 8536 Palmetto Commerce Parkway to put their names on a whitewashed support pile.

The $28 million building will house about 600 Roper employees from various departments, including: health care reimbursement, physician billing, coding, food and nutrition services, pre-admission services, the patient contact center, human resources, finance and payroll, materials and property management, information services and professional development.

The office building will sit on 24 acres of land and will include a fitness center, walking trails, video teleconferencing on each floor, a clinical simulation lab and a cafe offering breakfast and lunch.

This building will have its own culture, David Dunlap, president and CEO of Roper St. Francis said. These 600 people will be coming and working and seeing each other every day, whereas now theyve been scattered about and not really feeling as connected as they could.

The majority of the employees who will make the move are currently working in rented office space on Leeds Avenue, in Citadel Mall and within office buildings at Roper, according to Dunlap.

When they move into the new office building, Dunlap said Roper will use the money it will save on rented office space to pay the 20-year mortgage. The Medical Society of South Carolina is helping to facilitate that. The society is borrowing money from NBSC for Roper St. Francis to build the office park. Roper will repay the society.

That frees our credit up to do things like build the new hospital up in Berkeley, Dunlap said. So we dont have to put that amount on our balance sheet. Its an innovative way of two nonprofits working together.

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Roper building $28M office park in Ladson