Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens has confirmed plans to extend the city’s redevelopment ban on the former Atlanta Medical Center site for another six months.
If approved by the Atlanta City Council, it will be April 2024 — a full 18 months since the hospital was closed — before owner Wellstar Health System can do anything new with the 25-acre property that covers more than a city block in the Old Fourth Ward.
Atlanta enacted the development ban after the city was surprised by Wellstar Health System’s announcement that the hospital would be closed. Many are still angry about Wellstar’s abrupt announcement it would close the safety net hospital, as well as its plans to also convert a second AMC location in East Point into a clinic. Wellstar cited mounting financial losses for its decisions, but many pointed out that both hospitals served a patient population that included many low-income residents of color without insurance.
“As we’re coming up on a year moratorium, we will be extending that once again to make sure that we try to get the best deal, the best option, for our community,” Dickens said. “We’d love another hospital or another medical care facility right here.” Dickens shared his decision Friday when asked by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution during a vaccination event at CVS Health in Atlanta where he received his flu shot.
With the ban, the city’s planning department must refuse any applications for rezoning, building permits, land disturbances, special administrative permits, subdivisions, or other land changes for 15 parcels of land that were part of the AMC campus. City leaders have said that the moratorium gives leaders and the community more time to address AMC’s sudden closure. It ceased operations at the downtown hospital on Oct. 31, 2022.
When released, the mayor’s new executive order will stay in effect until the City Council votes on the measure. Their next meeting is Oct. 16.
Councilmember Keisha Sean Waites has advanced a plan calling for the city to turn the site into a “diversion and crisis center” that provides medical services, along with other services such as mental health, drug and alcohol treatment and short-term emergency housing. That proposal has been tabled for the time being.
The area where AMC was located has been home to a hospital for a century, once housing Georgia Baptist Hospital. Wellstar completed its purchase of the property in 2016.
City officials have said they would like for some type of health care facility to fill the void, possibly combined with other uses. But they are also keenly aware that the property is on the outskirts of gentrifying neighborhoods, making it attractive for developers.
Fulton County’s website lists the total assessed tax value for the former AMC properties at about $118.86 million.
The land lies within several zoning designations, including the C-1 Community Business District, C-2 Commercial Service District, C-4 Central Area Commercial Residential District and the Beltline Overlay District and Beltline Affordable Workforce Housing Districts.
“I really am looking forward to AMC coming back as a health care facility for the community,” Dickens said. “We want to make sure that people in Atlanta have many options and opportunities to get health care.”
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