Lil Jones has crossed thousands of patients’ paths in her 30 years as a volunteer at Centra Virginia Baptist Hospital. There’s one face she’ll never forget.
It’s the “scared, just terrified” face of a husband rushing his wife, in active labor, to the hospital’s information desk. There wasn’t time for Jones to point out directions to the labor and delivery unit on the hospital map like she did for others. “We had to get her in a wheelchair and in the elevator, now,” she said, recalling the memory.
“She was scared, you know, she was having her first baby. And the dad was just beside himself,” she said. “We got off the elevator, the nurse took the mom, and the dad just stopped, breathed and hugged me. Because I was the first person he saw that said, ‘Your family is going to be OK. We’ll take care of you.’”
That was about two decades ago, Jones, a 72-year-old retired science teacher, said. But the memory remains in focus because it reminds Jones of her volunteering philosophy: “You get back a lot more than you give.”
“It’s a wonderful feeling to help somebody out when they’re at their lowest point, their most scared. And if you can cheer them up and just help them, even for a second or two, you’ve made the world a better place, and there’s nothing like that feeling.”
While Jones’ memory is anchored by the family she helped, it’s just as much rooted in place. Virginia Baptist Hospital’s labyrinthine halls, tall windows that overlook the green front lawn and intangible spirit of historic legacy provide the backdrop for the work that Jones holds so close to her heart.
But Jones, like other volunteers, Centra staff and Lynchburg area residents, has to say goodbye to the 102-year-old hospital and its century of stories.
As part of a plan to modernize health care in the Lynchburg region, Centra will be phasing out medical services at Virginia Baptist over the next three years and moving them to new locations around town. By the end of 2028, the nearly 30-acre medical campus will be vacant or close to it.
Over the next five months, Centra officials are leading community engagement initiatives to gather ideas for what the next use of the campus could be. Their first community-wide meetings are scheduled for Thursday — one from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. and one from 5 to 7 p.m. — at Oakwood Country Club.
In the meantime, people like Jones are brainstorming how to keep Virginia Baptist’s memory alive.
“We just don’t want to lose that personal touch that this place has, and the warmth you feel when you come in,” she said.
Centra’s plan to modernize health care in the Hill City
Centra Health, a regional nonprofit health care system that provides medical services in central and southern Virginia, launched a modernization plan in 2023 to update and expand its operations to meet the demands of modern health care.
More than $657 million is committed to the modernization plan — $652 million of which is being spent in Lynchburg and adjacent Bedford and Campbell counties, according to a Centra press packet.
The plan includes consolidating specialty clinics into the Centra Langhorne Medical Center, a new five-story office building that opened in December. It also involves building a medical campus on Simons Run to house a behavioral health hospital and a rehabilitation hospital and constructing a six-floor tower at Centra Lynchburg General Hospital to house a new emergency department, surgical unit and maternity unit, among other services. The new construction is set to open in spring 2026 and fall 2028, respectively.
As the new spaces open, services will be phased out of Virginia Baptist Hospital to fill them. A variety of departments are housed at the campus currently, including psychiatry, radiology, rehabilitation therapy and services for mothers and children, such as a labor and delivery unit and neonatal intensive care unit. Nine of those departments are set to move to the Simons Run campus, and eight are scheduled to move to Lynchburg General, according to Centra.
There currently is no closing date set for Virginia Baptist, but Centra estimates that most services will be relocated by the end of 2028.
The modernization plan comes against the backdrop that, for the past four decades, Centra has operated two hospitals in Lynchburg that are only 3 miles apart. Lynchburg General, originally called Lynchburg Hospital, opened in 1912; Virginia Baptist followed a dozen years later. When the two merged to form Centra in 1987, the health system faced the challenge of maintaining services without unnecessarily duplicating them.
Virginia Baptist, unlike Lynchburg General, still operates in its original building — which was designed to meet the needs of the medical field 100 years ago.
Many rooms and hallways at Virginia Baptist are considerably narrower than what’s found in today’s standard hospital layouts, for example. Space that hospitals need for modern gurneys, mobile computer stations and lots of visitors wasn’t part of the health care equation in the 1920s.
Other modern functions, such as a helipad, don’t mesh with Virginia Baptist’s surrounding residential areas. The hospital had a helipad briefly in the 1990s, but it was removed due to neighbor complaints, according to the press packet.
“The demand and growth of medical care in the greater Lynchburg area required a more comprehensive approach that is not compatible in scale and intensity with surrounding residential uses in the Rivermont neighborhood,” Centra officials said in the press packet.
Kim Price, vice president of patient experience for Centra, said that the hospital’s pipes and wires are aging too, making modern medical advances increasingly more difficult to adopt.
Price, who has worked for Centra for 44 years, said she’s been impressed by how much the building has adapted over time. She saw it first-hand when she helped to install the hospital’s first computer system in 1992.
But there’s a limit to how much technology you can efficiently install in a space that was created for the health care of the 1920s, she said. In the new Centra buildings under construction, staff can weigh in on where everything from outlets to lights to furniture should be placed, Price said, creating spaces that are intentionally designed with patient care in mind.
Price, who has worn many hats at the hospital, from working in the finance department to serving as chief nurse during the COVID-19 pandemic, said there will be no easy way to say goodbye to Virginia Baptist, even though the move is what’s best for patient and staff experience.
“We all know we need to move forward. We all know that this building, while very precious to us and vibrant, we all know that it’s probably not the best location for health care today,” she said. “So it’s going to be bittersweet.”
Centra, which is one of the largest employers in Lynchburg, “intends to protect the jobs of employees” at Virginia Baptist Hospital as services are moved to new locations, according to the press packet. Systemwide, Centra employs about 9,000 caregivers, physicians and medical staff. About 1,000 are based at Virginia Baptist, said Denise Woernle, the health system’s vice president of communications, marketing and community relations. The plan is that “everybody moves with their service,” she said.
What’s next for the hospital? The community gets a say.
When Virginia Baptist Hospital eventually closes, it will leave more than 650,000 square feet of buildings and parking areas spread across 29 acres vacant, according to Centra. The buildings alone account for the same square footage as about five average Home Depot stores.
Centra officials plan to gather ideas from Lynchburg residents, hospital employees, volunteers and other stakeholders to make a plan for how to repurpose the space.
Progressive Companies, an architecture and engineering firm with offices in Durham, North Carolina, and Grand Rapids, Michigan, will lead the planning process. It will lean on community input to answer questions such as whether any medical services should remain on the campus; if Centra should sell or lease the land, or some combination of both; and what new businesses, amenities and community resources should move in.
The first engagement session was held in January, when hospital staff and neighbors immediately surrounding the hospital got to learn about the project and share their ideas.
A variety of potential new uses for the space were presented at the January meeting, including a boutique hotel, an apartment complex, a retail center, a coworking and community hub, and a space for elementary or higher education. The ideas that got the most traction with staff and neighbors — as shown on a poster at the meeting where attendees could vote by placing stickers next to the ideas they liked — were those that align with the hospital’s current caregiving purpose, such as a senior living facility, child care center or outpatient care office.
After the Thursday community meeting, Centra will host focus groups with specific community stakeholders, potential partners and developers to test concepts that have the highest interest. A multiday design session is scheduled for late March, when the community will be invited to share input on conceptual plans for the space.
A final adaptive reuse feasibility study will be presented in June, according to the press packet.
Woernle said the engagement process is crucial to ensuring that Virginia Baptist Hospital’s next chapter fits Lynchburg’s needs.
“This is a very special place for our community,” Woernle said at the January meeting. “It’s where babies have been born for generations, and a lot of care has been given here to people in our community. We really want them to be a part of helping to discover what that next use is for the hospital.”
The opportunities are essentially endless, said Marjette Upshur, the city’s director of economic development and tourism. A campus that large can have mixed uses and incorporate many priorities at once, depending on what residents would like to see, she said.
The main development limits stem from the campus’ historic protections, Upshur said. The front grounds and three buildings that fall within the Rivermont Historic District — the 1924 Main Building, 1925 Barker Building and 1926 Mundy Building — are protected and would need careful planning and review by the Historic Preservation Commission to be changed.
Upshur said she, like so many Lynchburg residents, has a personal connection to the campus that makes her understand and respect the historic preservation process. “This is a very, very special place,” she said, because she was born there and her grandmother worked there as a switchboard operator.
A legacy of welcoming and saving lives
About 150,000 babies have been delivered at Virginia Baptist since 1958, according to Centra data. About 2,500 babies were welcomed into the world there in 2025 alone.
The Lynchburg metro — comprising the city and its four surrounding counties of Amherst, Appomattox, Bedford and Campbell — has a population of about 265,000.
“Either you were born [at Virginia Baptist Hospital] or you know someone who was,” Price said, referencing how significant a touchpoint the hospital is for the area. Last year, when Centra ended its OB-GYN care offerings at Centra Southside Community Hospital in Farmville, Virginia Baptist became the health system’s only hospital in the area to offer labor and delivery services.
Price oversaw more than 40,000 deliveries between 2005 and 2021, when she was the director of women and children’s services, according to data provided by Centra. When she sees children and young adults out and about in the community today, she said the same thought always crosses her mind: “I probably signed your birth certificate.”
Price’s two children were born at Virginia Baptist Hospital, too.
“It’s a legacy,” Price said, “to have generations of mothers connected to this space.”
A touchpoint like Virginia Baptist Hospital is rare, said Gerry Sherayko, a history and museum and heritage studies professor at Randolph College who helps students understand how communities connect with the past. He worked with Randolph students throughout the 2010s to research the Rivermont neighborhood that surrounds Virginia Baptist and collect oral histories from its neighbors.
“This place has a living memory because of how many people’s lives started here, and how many people’s lives were saved here,” Sherayko said. “That’s why there’s going to be this sort of sense of loss when it closes. … Whoever takes it over I hope will honor the history of this as a place of healing, of birth, of life.”
Price said Virginia Baptist Hospital has a long resume outside of its labor and delivery department that adds to its storied history. In 1938, it became the first hospital in the city to have air-conditioned operating rooms. In 1967, it became the first hospital in Central Virginia to have a data processing department. In the ’70s, it became home to the region’s first neonatal intensive care unit, cardiac rehabilitation center, ultrasound services and oncology unit, according to displays at the hospital’s museum. In 1989, a Virginia Baptist doctor performed the area’s first open-heart surgery.
The hospital’s nursing program may be its most significant legacy, Price said. The Virginia Baptist Hospital School of Nursing trained more than 1,000 nurses from its first class in 1924 to its last graduation in 1982. Price was part of that last class, before the program was absorbed into then-Lynchburg College.
“Those nurses went on to become nurses that would work in this hospital, run this hospital, manage this hospital, and really create the culture for this facility and Centra,” she said. “We knew, as that last class, that we were carrying on a legacy.”
Historical and architectural significance outside the medical field
Sherayko said the Rivermont Historic District is packed with stories beyond the walls of Virginia Baptist Hospital. The district, which is listed on the Virginia Register of Historical Places and the National Register of Historical Places, is the largest of Lynchburg’s eight historic districts, stretching from the Rivermont Bridge to Oakwood Country Club.
The area’s history stems from a group of local businessmen and investors who formed The Rivermont Land Company in 1890, according to the Friends of Historic Rivermont research page. The company set out to develop a neighborhood northwest of the already established downtown Lynchburg. In doing so, they made Rivermont one of the first planned suburbs in American history, Sherayko said.
The Rivermont Land Company built a bridge over Blackwater Creek to the new development, and growth followed. From 1890 to the start of World War II, Rivermont Avenue attracted many businesses, middle- and upper-middle-class homes, and recreation areas, along with Randolph-Macon Woman’s College, a trolley system and Virginia Baptist Hospital.
Virginia Baptist cites a strong architectural history, Sherayko said, because it was designed by Stanhope Spencer Johnson, one of Lynchburg’s best-known architects who also designed local landmarks such as the Allied Arts Building and a variety of churches, schools, houses and commercial buildings around town. His career spanned about 70 years, from the late 1890s to the 1960s. By that time, he had completed 385 commissions for Lynchburg and a total of 700 across the country.
The building’s distinctive Georgian style and the way it fits seamlessly into the surrounding residential neighborhood make it one of Johnson’s standout projects, as recorded in “Stanhope Chronologically,” a book about the architect’s life work.
It’s fitting that Annie Massie, a Rivermont resident who helped lead the effort to achieve historic district status for the area in 2002, was born at Virginia Baptist Hospital and lived just across the street, Sherayko said.
Price said Virginia Baptist Hospital’s history will stay alive in the people who carry its spirit forward.
“What we don’t want to lose is our family feel. At Baptist, when you come in, everybody smiles. Everybody says, ‘Good morning.’ You go by the cafeteria, and you get your coffee with a smile,” she said. “That’s what I’ll remember of this place, and that’s what I don’t want to lose.”