Northside Hospital wants to build two 100,000-square-foot buildings near the Mall of Georgia, according to documents filed with Gwinnett County.
The hospital, which recently merged with Gwinnett Medical Center, cites the surrounding community’s need for convenient medical services as a reason to build in its application filed with Gwinnett’s zoning office. Northside also points to its merger with Gwinnett Medical Center as a reason the new buildings are needed.
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Katherine Watson, a spokeswoman for Northside hospital system, said the services offered and the project’s timeline have not yet been determined.
The hospital system applied Oct. 4 to rezone 20 acres of land on Rock Springs Road and Buford Drive in order to build a pair of towers that could be as high as 65 feet. The current limit on building height on that piece of land is 45 feet, so the hospital system must get a special use permit from the county.
The hospital is under contract for the land. Once the sale is final and there is a building design proposal, Northside will file for a Letter of Determination from the state Department of Community Health in order to get approval to build a medical office building. If Northside decides to offer ancillary services, it will have to file for a Certificate of Need, Watson said.
The merged Northside Hospital and Gwinnett Medical Center now employs 21,000 people and has five hospitals in metro Atlanta and outpatient facilities in more than 20 Georgia counties.
Before the merger, Northside did not have any operations in Gwinnett, but now, the hospital system has four locations in the county: Northside Hospital Gwinnett (formerly Gwinnett Medical Center - Lawrenceville), Northside Hospital Duluth (formerly Gwinnett Medical Center - Duluth), Northside Gwinnett Extended Care Center at the Lawrenceville hospital and Northside Gwinnett Joan Glancy (formerly the Glancy Rehabilitation Center in Duluth). Gwinnett Medical Center’s smaller offices and clinics around the county are also now part of the Northside system.
If approved, the new buildings near the mall would be the first major Northside facility in Buford. Northside currently has a sports medicine clinic in Buford and an imaging center in neighboring Sugar Hill. There is no hospital in Buford.
The medical buildings would be located across the street from the Exchange at Gwinnett, a mixed-use project still under development that’s expected to include a food hall, Topgolf and 1,000 apartments. Plans for the Exchange also include a medical office building.
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