Former Baptist Building Opens with New Name, Tenants

The former Baptist hospital is now the UM South Oxford Center. Departments started moving in earlier this month.
Photo by Steven Gagliano

By Alyssa Schnugg
Staff writer
alyssa.schnugg@hottytoddy.com

The former Baptist Memorial Hospital-North Mississippi in Oxford will be the new home to at least nine University of Mississippi departments within the next several months.

Earlier this month, the first occupant, the Counselor Education Clinic for Outreach and Personal Enrichment, started moving into the former Baptist hospital.

The Institutes of Higher Learning Board approved the sale in June 2017 for the university to purchase the 15-acre location for $22 million. It was officially turned over to UM in March.

The building has 428,000-square feet of space and a large parking garage.

Baptist sold the building to the university after plans were in place to build its new regional facility a mile away from the former campus on Belk Boulevard. The new hospital opened in November 2017.

The building also has a new name – South Oxford Center.

“The quality and quantity of space available at the South Oxford Center contributes to the university’s ability to efficiently address the allocation of space on our campus,” said Larry Sparks, UM vice chancellor for administration and finance. “We are pleased that this space offers an excellent option for support units, teaching and research activities, and other functions that serve external constituencies.”

Besides the Counselor Education Clinic for Outreach and Personal Enrichment, eight more tenants will move into the SOC throughout the 2018-19 academic year:

* Center for Excellence in Literacy Instruction
* Center for Health and Sport Performance
* Center for Research Evaluation
* Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders
* Living Blues magazine
* National Center for Computational Hydroscience and Engineering
* North Mississippi Japanese Supplementary School
* Office of Food and Nutrition Security

Future tenants to relocate to the facility will be selected over the coming months.

The building’s hours are from 7:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. An on-call shuttle service between the South Oxford Center and the main campus will be provided this fall.

Ole Miss staff and students who need transportation from the facility can call 662-915-7235 to set up a time for pickup 30 minutes in advance.

The shuttle will run 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Mondays through Fridays, and passengers will be picked up and dropped off at the South Oxford Center’s main entrance and at the Kennon Observatory on campus.

A continuous bus service may be implemented as demand warrants to connect the South Oxford Center to the main campus.

For more information about the SOC, visit http://soc.olemiss.edu/.

University Communications contributed to this story.