In one corner of Webster Groves, yard signs have sprouted out of the ground like daffodils in the spring.
Blue ones say, “We support children’s mental health,” while the green ones say, “Keep North Webster a neighborhood.”
The signs began to appear last year, when St. Louis Children’s Hospital and the mental health provider KVC announced they wanted to build a 77-bed pediatric mental health hospital near the intersection of Gore Avenue and Rock Hill Road.
Backers of a proposed mental health hospital for children 6 to 18 say the Webster Groves facility – which the organizations want to build in a residential part of the St. Louis County suburb – will provide drastically needed services for young patients.
“We operate a 14-bed inpatient unit in our hospital on the Kingshighway campus. Today, it is always full,” said Children’s Hospital President Trish Lollo. “St. Louis has less than 50% of the inpatient beds that we need to care for children in mental health crises. There are very few facilities in St. Louis that are offering this care.”
Opponents say they are concerned about security and traffic in their neighborhood.
Julie Cohen’s house is close to the current KVC school at the site and the proposed hospital. Based on past experience, she doesn’t have a lot of trust in the plan.
“People cite that historically [this site] has always been helping people,” she said. “And it's like, ‘Yeah. And it hasn't been great for the neighborhood,’” she said.
Expansion of existing facilities
The KVC school on the property serves children with autism, behavioral and emotional issues and other diagnoses. The plan would expand what’s there.
The one-story hospital would include inpatient beds for patients who need acute mental health care and 12 residential beds for those who need long-term treatment.
In addition to opening the inpatient hospital, the two organizations want to renovate another building for outpatient treatment. Demolition has already begun on some aging buildings on the property, which owners want to replace with newer construction.
KVC took over the property in 2023 from an organization called Great Circle, and officials at Children’s identified KVC as a company they could team up with to bring more mental health treatment to the region. Lollo said KVC’s land in Webster Groves was a bonus.
KVC President Lindsey Stephenson emphasized the facility won’t be a traditional hospital.
“I think when you think of a hospital, you think of a really tall building, you think of ambulances, and that's not what this hospital will be,” she said. “This hospital will be a single story, state-of-the-art facility where we're providing really significant and specialized mental health treatment for kids.”
She said that putting the hospital in a residential area instead of along an interstate or in a stretch of concrete parking lots will help patients.
“We think that when kids look out a window and they're seeing people walking their dogs, or they're seeing houses, that's what’s most familiar and normal to them, right?” she said. “We're normalizing the environment that they're in.”
Neighbors' concerns
Cohen is mostly concerned about security and traffic. In the past, she says emergency responders have been called to incidents at the school. She said because those incidents involved minors, there’s not a lot of information available about what happened.
Cohen bristles at the assumption that those who oppose the plan don’t support mental health for kids.
“I think they've done a really good job arguing the need for mental health,” she said.
She says choosing another location could accommodate a bigger, more accessible hospital that could serve more people.
“To the point it’s like, let’s blow this thing out of the water,” she said. “Let's make it 300 beds.”
Michael Garcia, another neighborhood resident, said he also wants more mental health for pediatric patients. But he doesn’t think the plan fits within the neighborhood, and he doesn’t completely buy the argument that the space will be conducive to patient healing.
“This is surrounded on four sides by homes,” he said. “It is not a park. It is not really what they're trying to make it out to be. It’s a residential community. I don't see the vision there. … Frankly, if that was what they were looking for, they're building a hospital on top of it.”
Garcia said in the past, students from the school have trespassed on neighbors’ property. Both he and Cohen discussed an incident last year when adults restrained a child on a neighborhood lawn.
“This isn't something against KVC, and this isn’t something certainly against Children's Hospital,” he said. “It's the nature of the type of facility that is undoubtedly going to have risks.”
KVC and Children’s Hospital say they weren’t connected to the incident last year, but they are aware of problems that have occurred in the past. The new facility will have delayed-open doors, air tags for kids and other security measures in place. They also cite a study they commissioned that shows there won’t be changes to traffic patterns.
Cynthia Rogers, Washington University’s director of child psychiatry and a psychiatrist at Children’s Hospital, said she was disappointed in how some residents have spoken about prospective patients.
“It’s been quite discouraging and disappointing to hear how our patients have been described,” she said. “The way they’re describing them is not the way they would describe a child with any other illness.”
Increased needs
Mental health needs for children and teenagers have increased, particularly since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, Rogers said.
“The rates of mental health symptoms and disorders have been increasing so significantly in the population, what had been sufficient 10 years ago is no longer sufficient,” she said.
Children’s Hospital used to log approximately 600 visits to the emergency department each year for behavioral health issues, she said. In 2023, that number had jumped to around 2,000, Rogers said.
For the most part, the patients we’re seeing have depression and suicidal ideation,” she said. “Most of the children … are presenting for suicidal attempts and mood disorders ... aggressive behavior is not what they’re presenting.”
What comes next?
Members of the North Webster Neighborhood Coalition, a nonprofit group concerned with the historical African-American area, are urging the city council to approve the zoning that would allow construction.
Coalition member Connie Evans said representatives from the project have met with the group.
“This project is a wonderful fit for our vision as a kind and caring community,” Evans wrote in an email. “While there have been issues in the past, we put our faith in [Children’s Hospital] to administer a safe and organized facility.”
So far, the project has received support from Webster Grove officials – the city’s Plan Commission late last year voted unanimously to approve it.
Now the future of the 23 acres is in the city council’s hands. A public hearing before the council is set for 7 p.m. Tuesday at city hall.
This story has been updated with comments from a member of the North Webster Neighborhood Coalition.
