MUSC Health to pay $83.5M to buy part of Citadel Mall. Plans are to expand on site. By Tom Corwin and John McDermott Dec 12, 2025 CHARLESTON — MUSC Health is acquiring a large chunk of Citadel Mall to expand its health care services in West Ashley, but the move will not displace existing retailers, an official said.
The health system’s board of trustees voted Dec. 12 to buy 330,000 square feet of the shopping center, plus nearly 2,300 parking spaces, for $83.5 million. That includes 126,000 square feet that MUSC Health already leases.
The health system had nearly outgrown its footprint at the mall — the last available space opened for care this week — and had been negotiating for about a year with the property owner on an expansion when the idea of buying instead came up, said MUSC Health CEO Patrick Cawley.
“Frankly, it started to look like buying was a better deal for us,” he said.
The space for the expansion is essentially the old Sears store, which is now vacant, Cawley said.
MUSC Health already has clinics, outpatient surgery, ambulatory procedures, laboratory and radiology in the mall space, and all of them are growing, he said.
“We need more of all of those things,” Cawley said.
Once a thriving retail destination, the Citadel Mall fell on hard times during the 2007 recession, when its vacancy rate climbed to 25 percent and its value plummeted. Chattanooga-based CBL Properties Inc. allowed the ailing 1.1 million-square-foot site to fall into foreclosure in 2013.
The mall has been owned by Singerman Real Estate of Chicago since early 2023. The firm did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
MUSC Health has had an agreement to lease the old J.C. Penney department store at the mall since 2017 and reported it would spend $33 million to convert the former retail space into a health care services hub.
MUSC Health West Ashley Medical Pavilion opened in late 2019.
For some of the same reasons shoppers choose to go to a mall — quick access, ample parking, close proximity to major roads — MUSC Health said patients have flocked to the space.
“It’s one of our most successful spaces across the entire health system,” Cawley said. “Patients love it. It's easy parking, it's easy to access in a lot of ways. It's right near the highway. It's just easy.”
It’s also closer to where many patients live, in West Ashley and beyond, which continues the trend in health care to put many services closer to where people live and make it more convenient for them to receive care, he said.
But MUSC will still have a strong presence downtown, where higher-level care will be delivered, Cawley said. The main peninsula campus will see a significant addition with a new planned cancer hospital, part of the health system’s push to become a top-tier National Cancer Institute Comprehensive Cancer Center in the next few years. That was made easier by working with Charleston Mayor William Cogswell and City Council on the “Medical District Overlay” that will allow MUSC greater flexibility with zoning regulations to do what it needs to do to build it, MUSC President David Cole said.
“Thank you to the mayor of Charleston and the city government,” he told his board. The importance of that is “something that cannot be overstated.”
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