New hospital tops list of Lee County developments

LEESBURG — Growth and progress have long been the watchwords of Lee County leaders, and that notion is more pertinent than ever in 2017 as the county prepares for multiple expansion projects and — with the construction of a new state-of-the-art private hospital on the horizon — possibly the biggest development the county has seen in years.

For the better part of the past year, Lee County residents and officials have been buzzing about the new $50 million hospital expected to locate on the property formerly occupied by the Grand Island Golf Club. It now looks like the project is nearing one of its most important phases.

It was announced in June of last year that the County Commission and the County Development Authority had entered into preliminary agreements with a group of investors and developers to construct the hospital and, in the process, bring an end to long-simmering frustrations throughout the county about the Grand Island golf course that had been losing money since the county took over its operations some 12 years prior.

Since that time, the project has steadily moved forward, while the golf course’s operations were shut down late last year. The county’s recreation authority prevailed in a lawsuit filed by the Grand Island Homeowners Association to stop development of the hospital project in November.

With those hurdles crossed, the project is now nearing perhaps its most important step as the group of investors is preparing to request a Certificate of Need from the Georgia State Board of Health. If that is granted, the expectation is that Freese Johnson LLC, a Marietta construction firm, will build the hospital facility and could break ground on the project some time in the next six months.

“Within the very near future, we will be sending notification to the Georgia State Board of Health that our formal CON request will be coming in 30 days thereafter,” said Lee County Development Authority Executive Director Winston Oxford. “If all goes well, we are hoping to break ground on our hospital in the third quarter or early fourth quarter of this year and be open for business in early 2019.”

In addition to those timeframe details, Oxford expounded on other recent developments surrounding the project and how the construction of the hospital will serve as an economic engine for the county.

“It’s true that investment on the properties of our once Grand Island Golf Course will definitely serve as a catalyst for other investments in that part of Lee County, including additional medical facilities as well as more commercial investments,” he said. “But frankly, this new hospital is just simply a good fit for our Southwest Georgia community.”

Oxford said that the hospital plans have changed slightly since the project was first announced, with the number of beds actually being more than 50, as was originally reported.

“Our hospital will have 60-plus beds, expandable to to maybe 80,” Oxford said.

The Development Authority director also said that the hospital will be a full-service facility, at which 10 of the beds will serve as intensive care beds and another 10 as overnight stay beds.

Although he did not share further details, such as whether the hospital will handle trauma calls or whether or not it will have a birthing center, Oxford did say that the facility would handle some indigent care, which is an area around which there has been much speculation.

Henry Johnson, chief strategy officer of Freese Johnson, filled in some other details about the project, including noting that while final designs are not completed, he expects the hospital building itself to be multiple stories and measure north of 100,000 square feet.

“We’re really just still in the early phases of the design work,” Johnson said. “My guess is it will probably be two stories and probably, roughly 120,000 to 130,000 square feet. Like I said, we’re still early in the process, and we haven’t gotten any approvals.”

Johnson also said that his company has been working through the land surveys and that he has a good idea of where the hospital will sit on the Grand Island property. According to a graphic Johnson provided, the hospital proper will likely be situated slightly northwest of the existing clubhouse and southwest of Grand Island Drive on property that was formerly part of the golf course’s front nine.

The graphic also showed images of similar hospital projects the company has built around the country, which gives some idea of the design elements that might go into the Lee County facility. Additionally the graphic showed images of certain landscape designs and pictures of walking trails, which is something that will be included on the property surrounding the hospital once it’s built.

Both Oxford and Johnson, as well as Lee County Commissioner Rick Muggridge, have maintained that the hospital design will tie in with the overarching vision of the entire development of the golf course property, which Oxford said will include development to draw other medical investments, such as doctors’ offices.

While the full range of the hospital’s services, or what company will handle the facility’s operations, has not yet been determined, Oxford did address some speculations.

“I like to think of this new hospital as being the Emory, Navisant or Piedmont of Southwest Georgia,” he said. “The only existing hospital in our area, Phoebe (Putney Memorial Hospital), is staffed for trauma and has now contracted with Grady Ambulance Services to deliver our area’s emergencies to their facilities. I am certain that this will continue.

“However, just like Emory and Wellstar and the other hospitals that I mentioned, our Lee County Hospital will be supplying some indigent care.”

Oxford keyed in on the fact that, once the hospital is built, operators will focus on trying to pull in patients who otherwise might have gone outside of the community to have certain surgeries and procedures done. Priority also will be given to the area’s independent doctors, many of whom Oxford said he believes will leave the community in the future should a new hospital not locate in the area.

“I am told by local independent surgeons of a particular specialty that, presently, over 40 percent of all surgeries performed on our area’s residents are performed outside of Albany,” Oxford said. “This will be our target market, thus bringing dollars back to our community which otherwise would leave our area.

“On another note, our hospital will cater to and prioritize local independent doctors. If a hospital is not built in our area in the very near future, I predict that you will see local independent doctors relocating to areas where they will have a prioritized relationship with a hospital or our existing doctors, as they retire, will not be replaced by new independent physicians.”

In fact, concern over a future lack of physicians in the area is something Oxford said is of the utmost importance, possibly even more important than the hospital serving as an economic engine.

“It is my understanding after visiting with numerous local independent doctors in our area, that over the last half dozen years, they simply cannot recruit new doctors to join them in private practice,” Oxford said. “If something doesn’t change, I foresee erosion of health care in Southwest Georgia because of the lack of independent doctors.

“Like I said, this hospital is going to be good for the citizens of Lee County, for the entire region.”

While the hospital project has certainly grabbed most of the headlines, the Chamber director said other big projects loom on the horizon in Lee County.

One such project is the expansion of Woodgrain Millwork on U.S. Highway 82. Oxford said the company, which specializes in the production of moulding, prefinished moulding, door shop products and window parts, recently announced it would build a 25,000-square-foot warehouse and expand one of its production lines.

Oxford said the roughly $2 million investment will create approximately 60 area jobs.

“This is good news for the whole community,” he said.

The development authority director also said local businessman Terry Ho has procured three acres of land in the county’s industrial park, next to the newly built Flint Ag & Turf facility, where he is building a plant for manufacturing Terry Ho’s Yum Yum Sauce.

Oxford said Ho, who popularized the sauce at his Hibachi Express restaurants, had been contracting with another producer to make the sauce and decided it was in his best interest, and in the best interest of his home community, to produce the product here.

“There’s no one who cares more about this community than Terry,” Oxford said. “He’s a good guy, and he’s always looking for ways to help the community. This is going to be a good project.”

While he admits there are a few deals he was hoping to secure for the county that have not yet come to fruition, Oxford said there’s no doubt things are moving in the right direction for Lee County.

“There’s no doubt we’ll get more development,” he said. “You just have to find the right projects. I think this hospital is really going to have an impact.

“I expect to totally get inundated with calls from investors looking to do something with the rest of that (property). Like I said, the hospital is going to be a heck of a catalyst for more health care entities there.”