The Old Panera Headquarters on South Geyer Road Gets a Second Life as Sunset Hills' New Medical Center

The four-story office building at 3630 S. Geyer Road has spent most of its life as a place where people from somewhere else came to work. Anheuser-Busch had offices there first. Then, from 2010, it was the national headquarters of Panera Bread Co., the company that started here as St. Louis Bread Co. and still uses that name on many of its local cafes.

This fall the building takes on a new kind of tenant. BJC HealthCare and WashU Medicine are opening it as the Center for Advanced Medicine–Sunset Hills, a 117,000-square-foot outpatient center with primary care, specialty clinics, imaging, outpatient surgery and a walk-in orthopedic injury clinic that keeps Saturday hours. For years the building drew in a corporate workforce. Now it's being set up for the people who live nearby, for weekday appointments, and for the Saturday morning after a fall off a ladder.

Three tenants, one address

The building has gone through three lives, and each one says something about what St. Louis needed from that corner of Geyer Road at the time.

Panera brought its headquarters to Sunset Hills from offices in Richmond Heights and Brentwood. That gave the city one of the better-known corporate addresses in South County for over a decade.

Why the office emptied out

Panera left because of how its staff now worked. They hadn't outgrown the building. KSDK reported that the company planned to move its headquarters to The 1400 Building on the Maritz campus at 1400 S. Highway Drive in Fenton, about 4 miles away, aiming for mid-2023. The 650 corporate employees based in Sunset Hills were on a hybrid schedule, and that had cut the company's need for traditional office space.

The numbers in that report show how big the change was. On Geyer Road, Panera had about 150,000 square feet across four floors. The Fenton space was two floors and 72,000 square feet, less than half as much. A building made for hundreds of people at desks five days a week no longer suited the company that had filled it.

Health care stepped in. In April 2024, First Alert 4 reported that BJC HealthCare had bought the former St. Louis Bread Company headquarters for just under $10 million. Two and a half years later, the building is getting ready for patients.

What moves in this fall

BJC HealthCare and WashU Medicine announced the opening on October 12 and 13, 2026. They said the center will welcome its first patients this fall. It's their third Center for Advanced Medicine. The first opened in 2002 on the Washington University Medical Campus, and the second opened in 2016 at 5201 Midamerica Plaza in South County.

In the WashU Medicine announcement, Janene Reeves, the center's director of operations, said the location will bring physicians and specialty services "closer to home for patients in south St. Louis County and along the I-44 corridor."

Here are the services the announcement lists for the building:

• Orthopedics and injury care, including sports medicine, shoulder, hip and knee, spine, hand, physiatry and platelet-rich plasma treatments, plus a walk-in Orthopedic Injury Clinic
• Cardiology, with EKGs, echocardiograms, stress testing and nuclear medicine testing
• Obstetrics and gynecology, including prenatal and postpartum care, ultrasounds and urogynecology
• Ophthalmology and medical optometry
• ENT/otolaryngology, covering hearing loss and hearing aids, sinus care, sleep apnea and head and neck surgery
• Non-oncology infusion and injection therapies
• Primary care through BJC Medical Group, including family medicine and general internal medicine for patients of all ages
• Gastroenterology, endocrinology, pulmonary medicine, rheumatology, geriatrics and occupational therapy

The building will also have diagnostic testing, imaging, outpatient surgery and an on-site pharmacy for post-procedure needs. BJC's provider directory already lists BJC Medical Group Family Medicine at Sunset Hills at the 3630 S. Geyer Road address.

The walk-in clinic changes the building's hours

Panera's office ran on a corporate workday. The part of the new center likely to matter most on an ordinary week keeps a different clock. WashU Medicine Orthopedics labels its Sunset Hills location "Opening October 2026." It lists two sets of hours, one for scheduled appointments and one for walk-ins.

The Orthopedic Injury Clinic takes walk-ins for recent bone, muscle and joint injuries. It sees patients age 5 and older and has X-ray, splinting and casting on site. Its weekday hours start at noon and run into the evening, and it's open Saturday mornings, so it's built around school and work schedules. That's a long way from a building that used to empty out at the end of the business day.

The South County Center for Advanced Medicine at 5201 Midamerica Plaza keeps its own Orthopedic Injury Clinic. WashU Orthopedics lists both locations separately.

Finding it, parking, and the Lindbergh building

The orthopedic clinic is in Suite 110 on the first floor, with free surface parking for patients and visitors. WashU describes the location as near Lindbergh Boulevard and Watson Road, a few minutes from Interstate 270. The scheduling line for the orthopedic practice is 314-514-3500.

Many Sunset Hills patients already know a different BJC address. BJC's location directory lists a separate outpatient center at 3844 S. Lindbergh Boulevard, with practices in cardiology, endocrinology, ENT, rheumatology, OB-GYN and adult medicine. Several of those specialties also appear on the Geyer Road list. The October announcements say nothing about the Lindbergh building, though. If your doctor practices there, call that office and ask which address your next appointment is at.

The opening has been announced as "this fall" and "October 2026," with no single ribbon-cutting date. So if you're planning a first visit in the next few weeks, call ahead to check that the clinic you need is seeing patients.

If you live near Geyer and Lindbergh and want to talk through what a new medical center around the corner could mean for your own plans in South County, Amy Prusinowski is always happy to have that conversation. Schedule a free consultation whenever the timing is right for you.