A minor revision on the former clubhouse property of the Jones Creek subdivision is not the only such item the Columbia County Planning Commission is considering on Thursday. Augusta University’s Columbia County hospital is inching its way further toward development.
On Jan. 18, AU Medical Center Inc. submitted a minor revision request for its 50-acre parcel along Gateway Boulevard.
In May 2019, AU successfully petitioned to rezone the property located just southeast of the right-of-way of Interstate Highway 20, from Light Industrial and Single-family residential to S-1 special, for a “medical mixed-use campus.”
In the master plan that AU provided the county when the property was originally rezoned, the hospital was roughly in the center of the development, with a medical office building to the west alongside other medical buildings and even retail space proposed on the eastern side.
The revised concept plan prepared by Cranston Engineering and SmithGroup has the 247,000-square foot hospital building in the proposed hospital development switching places with a 92,000-square foot medical office. The new plans also show parking for the buildings and a helipad.
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Future development of the site may entail replacing proposed parking lots with uses as noted in the narrative, as well as a possible parking deck. These modifications will likely require a major revision in the future.
Planning staff recommends approval of the request, according the staffing report, because of the “minor nature of the change.”
The development of a hospital in Columbia County has been a rough road, as AU Health’s plans have been contested since 2014, when the Georgia Department of Community Health granted it a Certificate of Need.
Doctors Hospital and University Hospital contested the certificate via appeals, which came to a head in summer of 2021 when the Georgia Supreme Court declined to review a ruling by the Georgia Court of Appeals in AU’s favor.
Skyler Q. Andrews is a staff reporter covering business for The Augusta Press. Reach him at skyler@theaugustapress.com.
