Lee Medical Center planned to be full-service facility, provide indigent care

LEESBURG — The Lee County Commission meeting on Tuesday evening served as an opportunity for officials to issue the first public statement on Lee County Medical Center since a Certificate of Need letter of intent was filled for the facility last week.

“We wanted to get some facts out there,” Commission Vice Chair Billy Mathis said.

The letter of intent was filed April 18 for the hospital that is planned to be built on the property once occupied by the now-closed Grand Island Golf Club. With the letter filed, a formal CON application is expected to be sent to the Georgia Department of Public Health within the next month.

The hospital is now expected to have 60 beds and cost more than $100 million. While the specific service lines are still being worked out and will be outlined in the formal CON, Mathis said, it will be a full-service, acute-care hospital and have a fully functioning emergency center.

The hospital will accept all patients, including those in need of indigent care, and is expected to bring in 150 new “high-paying” jobs, Mathis said.

A review process will take place after the CON is filed. If that goes smoothly, construction, expected to take 15-18 months to complete, would begin late this year or early in 2018.

“The County Commission is just glad to expand health care options in this community,” Mathis said.

Mathis said the estimates he has been given suggest the hospital would bring in $1 million in additional revenue a year, which does not include what may come from growth county officials anticipate in the surrounding area. There already has been interest generated from a variety of entities, including doctors’ offices, businesses, hotels and restaurants.

“The economic growth will be substantial in the area,” Mathis said.

Mathis added that the Lee County Development Authority will issue bonds to finance the hospital, which means the burden for payment would not fall on the taxpayer.

In other business, Lee County Co-Manager Christi Dockery said a variance application was denied by the commission for Fairway Outdoor Advertising that would have allowed the company to build a double-sided billboard on U.S. Highway 82 with multi-message capability on one face. The billboard was to have been placed on a lot with an existing ground sign and would have been within 1,000 feet of a residential district and within 2,000 feet of an existing billboard.

The current ordinance concerning billboards requires them to be located at least 1,000 feet from a residential district and for new billboards to be located at least 2,000 feet from any existing billboard, as measured from the location of the base of the sign along the same side of the street.

Ordinances also restrict ground signs to one double-faced sign per street frontage.

Dockery added that a request for proposal was approved by the commission for a road re-striping project that includes Cookville Road, Graves Springs, Hickory Road and Ledo Road. A $10,550 grant was accepted from Colonial Pipeline Company for air-monitoring equipment, and an agreement with the Southwest Georgia Regional Commission was approved to allow for the implementation of a comprehensive plan and service delivery strategy.

The process involving SWGRC will be a yearlong endeavor expected to include public hearings that will be scheduled as circumstances unfold, Dockery said.