Mercy's 'Virtual Medicine' HQ to Displace City Founder's Home

The longtime home of modern Chesterfield's founder, Louis S. Sachs, has come under the eye of on some 52 acres at the site.

Sachs died nearly a year ago at age 83, after buying his first Chesterfield property in 1967

Mercy apparently now owns the 9-acre Sachs property for a total of some 52 acres in the so-called southeast quadrant of Chesterfield Village—the area encircled by Chesterfield Parkway.

In October, Mercy said it in Chesterfield at that site.

See location and telemedicine hub in the photo gallery here.

Sachs created "Chesterfield Village" with a master plan drawn up in 1970, hoping to establish offices, shopping, restaurants, the arts and residential within the Village.

The Sachs' house sits directly across from the entrance to Chesterfield Mall, shrouded in woods and set back from Clarkson Road and Highway 40. The house drive looks directly at the Drury Plaza hotel. For many years, Sachs' office was in a building there at the entrance to Chesterfield Mall. He may have walked to work in five minutes.

In a now familiar story, Sachs lured mall developers to his Chesterfield Village when he learned in a chance meeting that they were planning a mall for Clayton Road at Clarkson Road.

Mercy Health testified before Chesterfield's Planning Commission this week over its 10-year plan to put four buildings on the combined parcels that includes Sachs' former home.

The former Sachs house is ranch-style circa 1970, with what looks like a 4-car—or maybe 6-car attached garage. There is another 2-car separate garage, and a guest or caretaker house on the property.

See photos included here. 

In the past two decades, Sachs said he spent only about one week a month in Chesterfield, and the remainder of the year at a home on Maryland's Eastern Shore, where he died May 2011. His father Samuel Sachs founded Sachs Electric.

Mercy's collection of parcels at the former Sachs site includes two or three detention basins, and backs up to an apartment complex. Other parcels were previously designated as owned by Missouri Bank, Eldridge Payne Office Development, and SSM Healthcare.

Preliminary plans suggest the main entrance to the Mercy campus would be across Chesterfield Parkway from Brandywine condominiums and Schoettler Village apartments. A traffic signal would be added at that proposed entrance—between the existing signals at Shoettler Valley Drive and Eldridge Payne Parkway.

The tallest building(s) on campus would be six stories high, according to preliminary plans.

The proposal described the campus buildout as:

• Offices: 43 percent
• Medical use: 22 percent
• Open space: 30 percent
• Ancillary uses: 3.5 percent

The plans would come back before the city and public at least three times before some approvals, city officials said.

The project would be built in phases, a Mercy spokesman said.

Look for more details as the plans proceed.