All that remains where an old laundry factory in East Baltimore once stood is a pile of gravel, littered trash and broken bricks tagged with graffiti. But a local anchor church, which purchased and demolished the building years ago, is working to transform the site into a $32 million health and wellness center.

Bishop Donté Hickman Sr., head of Southern Baptist Church, led a ground-breaking ceremony this week to mark the start of construction on the new Southern Streams Health and Wellness Center. The 20,000-square-foot center, at 1501 N. Chester St., will bring urgent and primary health care services to the Broadway-East community, as well as a pharmacy, comprehensive nutrition guidance and medical work force training.

Speaking to at least 200 attendees at the event on Monday — including elected officials, private partners and neighborhood residents — Hickman said the church is fulfilling its mission of “restoring people and rebuilding properties.”

He hopes the new wellness center will reduce health disparities and morbidity rates in Baltimore, where life expectancy is lower than in the rest of Maryland. Life expectancy is highest — over 80 years — in Montgomery and Howard counties, while Baltimore has the lowest life expectancy, at just under 71 years, according to data from Maryland Department of Health.

“It made no sense to us that a community that is six blocks away from one of the most formidable health institutions in the world would have its residents suffering, becoming physically incapacitated and die from preventable illnesses — so, we got to work,” Hickman said.

Emergency and primary health care services will be provided by Johns Hopkins, Quality Pharmacy, CareFirst, Alterwood Health of LifeBridge and Dwyer Workforce Development, a health care training nonprofit.

Gov. Wes Moore, who attends Southern Baptist, said at the event that “faith without works is dead,” crediting Hickman with having the vision to bring Southern Streams to fruition. The project received funding from the public and private sector, nonprofit organizations, community organizations and federal, state and local government.

The Moore-Miller administration contributed $3 million to the project. In 2022, Sens. Chris Van Hollen and Ben Cardin, along with Rep. Kweisi Mfume, secured $5 million in congressional spending for the health and wellness center.

“We thank God for the vision we’ve had for this being part of an overall strategy to transform East Baltimore, and of course, at the heart of the strategy is to make sure that every child who grows up in this neighborhood and every person who lives in this area has an opportunity and a brighter future,” Van Hollen said.

After the Bugle Laundry Factory closed in 1998, Hickman said the site was once offered to the church for a $1 sale. However, the church didn’t purchase it until 2017, for significantly more, and demolished the building in 2018.

“It’s important to know that this property was offered to Southern Baptist Church for $1 in the 1980s, but because we didn’t have a vision at that time for it, we eventually paid over $600,000 to acquire it,” Hickman said.

Construction will get fully underway in January and is expected to take 18 months, with completion slated for January 2027.

The new wellness center will join a handful of facilities South Baptist has built in East Baltimore. The Mary Harvin Center across the street from church, which opened in 2016, offers 60 housing units to seniors. In 2015, construction of the facility halted after it was set ablaze amid heated protests and unrest following Freddie Gray’s death in Baltimore. Southern Baptist Church also built the the Cole Grant Higgs Senior Housing Complex.