7-minute read
AdventHealth will be able to build a 400-bed hospital with a helicopter pad at the southeast corner of Harden Boulevard and Frontage Road/Polk Parkway, as a result of a zoning change approved by the Lakeland City Commission on Monday.
An emergency room planned by Advent will be able to open as early as 2026 with the hospital coming later, a company representative said. Monday’s zoning change will also allow eventual placement of a 250-unit apartment complex and 200,000 square feet of retail space on the site.
McCarley opposed: The vote was 5-1 after at least an hour of discussion on Monday. Sarah Roberts McCarley was the lone dissenting vote. Commissioner Chad McLeod, who had been at the meeting all morning, left for a previously scheduled meeting for his job at Compassion International.
Traffic study: McCarley acknowledged a 2014 traffic study, which was updated in 2018 and showed the road could handle 24,500 cars daily. But she said that the study is outdated.
“When you all were deciding that in 2018 and it was signed off on, was that inclusive of the influx of growth we were going to see in the state of Florida, along with COVID and all the other things that were going to increase our population? Did you forecast that?” she asked Chuck Barmby, the city’s planning and transportation manager.
Barmby said the City Commission adopted the study in 2014 and continued to evaluate the roadways in the design process, when the City Commission approved a hotel and retail shops for the property.
An updated study for the Florida Department of Transportation permitting at the intersection of Harden Boulevard and Frontage Road/Polk Parkway is planned, which will be coordinated with the AdventHealth development.
Neighbors say traffic is already bad: David Horsting, who has lived for 22 years in the Palo Alto subdivision off Old Highway 37, said multiple subdivisions along his road have suffered with increased traffic since the Pipkin Road widening project saw drivers trying to avoid the construction.
“Congestion on Harden Boulevard is going to worsen the conditions on Old Road 37,” Horsting said, adding that there have been three accidents by Resurrection Catholic Church’s playground near the dogleg curve in the road.
“I don’t see any stop signs, stop lights, anything along Frontage Road south, and that’s where the problem is going to be for all of those in South Lakeland,” Horsting said.
Air traffic concerns: Danette Lockwood, who lives in The Villas III off Old Highway 37, expressed concerned about both road and air traffic, particularly from a hospital helicopter.
“There’s already constant noise from the (Amazon) plane traffic going from six in the morning to midnight,” Lockwood said. “There’s already a tremendous amount of apartments that are being built on the other side of Harden Boulevard. This is overwhelming these communities, and as you’ve already heard, there’s already traffic problems, and they’re going to be other problems as well. I’m just saying that you guys have a contract with the people first, before you have agreements with corporate entities.”
Barmby said the Federal Aviation Administration must sign off on the new AdventHealth Hospital’s height, which is currently planned for 130 feet, because of its location in the flight path to Lakeland Linder International Airport.
Wild hogs: McCarley said she has received many emails from citizens, including one from Lisa Martin of The Villas III. Martin said wild hogs from an apartment complex currently under construction are being pushed into their neighborhood.
“Why in the world Lakeland wants to crowd everything together is a mystery to me,” Martin wrote. “I am a native Lakelander and I’m sick of it. There is plenty of property near the airport and other places. This area cannot handle the traffic. It’s important that we plan our infrastructure and traffic flow first and not the other way around … Please stop this madness.”
Property history: The area is part of the Oakbridge “development of regional impact,” a term that describes a major development. The Oakbridge DRI covers 1,300 acres and dates back to 1987. Tim Campbell, an attorney for the land owner, Drummond Company, said Drummond paid substantial fees over time to help create major intersection and road improvements.
In addition to the Oakbridge communities and shopping center on the east side of Harden Boulevard, the Drummond DUI also includes:
- Grasslands, which was developed in the late 1980s on the west side of Harden Boulevard as a gated, upscale golf neighborhood on a former phosphate mine.
- Lakeside Village, which opened in 2003 and includes a mall, outparcels with shops, hotels and restaurants, and an apartment complex.
Wabash Extension: Barmby said part of the city’s plans to alleviate traffic congestion on Harden Boulevard is plans to extend Wabash Avenue from its current deadend at Ariana Street south and curve it to meet Harden Boulevard.
The two-lane extension would run along the western edge of the Grasslands golf course and Lakeside Village, and then connect to Harden at the entrance to the AdventHealth Hospital, about 200 yards south of the Polk Parkway intersection.
Barmby said the 2018 study update called for the extension to be a two-lane road and not four lanes. “A good system of two-lane roads can balance traffic needs and community impacts better than four-lane roads in most instances,” he said in a text.
Campbell noted that Drummond is giving a significant amount of right-of-way property to the city for the extension and an adjacent multi-use trail.
McCarley expressed concern that the Wabash Avenue Extension has been all talk and no construction for years.
“I heard about Wabash in 2012 when I was executive director of Polk Vision, so, like, it doesn’t seem any further along, and that’s not a criticism,” McCarley said. “It’s just a fact that it’s not going to mitigate anything in the short term right now.”
Why another hospital? In 2019, the Florida Legislature repealed the “certificate of need” law. Health-care companies had been required to show there was a need in the community for a hospital before being allowed by the state to build. The repeal allows health-care companies to build without first obtaining the state’s permission.
That has led to a building boom in Lakeland. Orlando Health is building a hospital on Lakeland Highlands Road, just south of the Polk Parkway, and Lakeland Regional Health has built an emergency room and doctor’s office on Kathleen Road next to I-4, with another ER being built on South Florida Avenue near Christina.
Timeline: Michael Lawson, AdventHealth director of real estate, said now that the approval has been obtained, engineering could begin. He said the emergency room should open in late 2026 or early 2027, with the rest of the hospital coming along after that.
“You were justifiably so in asking all the due-diligence questions … your questions were spot on (in) concerns for the citizens,” Lawson said. “(We’re) proud and happy to be a part of the Lakeland community, offering our whole-person experience.”
McCarley told Lawson not to take her vote personally, explaining that she was looking at the big picture. She added that her father had excellent care at an AdventHealth facility.
“We hope that we’ll be good partners in spite of, you know, this is just sort of the making of the sausage as far as policy making,” McCarley said.
latest news
Something went wrong. Please refresh the page and/or try again.
Nothing brings out the NIMBYs like a construction project in their vicinity. News flash – traffic is bad all over. We need roads. At the rate it’s taking to reconstruct Pipkin (what, 3 years now??) they need to get started in a big way. They’ve been collecting that extra nickel per gallon for what … decades now?
This is ridiculous. We don’t need this many hospitals in Lakeland. And no more apartments until they can figure out our traffic problems. I’m from NJ but have lived here more than 30 years. Traffic is now worse here. Soon we won’t have enough water. The building has to slow down!!!
We don’t need 5 hospital systerms in Lakeland. LRH, ORMC in progress, Advent Health now, soon to add HCA, and also a Moffitt Satelite. Wow……
What’s not mentioned is the possibility of the continuation of Wabash extension continuing from Beaker Rd due south connecting at the 1200 block of Pipkin Road in the future. Would be sweet!
With all these new hospitals in town there will be fierce competition and cost of care will come down considerably, isn’t that how it works? Oh wait, this is free market healthcare, which has an inverse relationship with cost, so cost will go up considerably.