Lowndes County Health Department employees and patients Thursday morning moved one step closer to acquiring a new facility, as the county Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to purchase a more than 3-acre plot of land for the project.

The about 3.2-acre piece of land is near the intersection of Lehmberg Road and Warpath Road, will cost the county about $230,000 and will be funded through a portion of the county”s projected $4.8 million in interest accrued from the sale of Baptist Memorial Hospital-Golden Triangle.

In 2006, the hospital was sold to Baptist for $30 million; prior to the sale, Baptist had leased the facility from Lowndes County on a 50-year lease, which began in 1993.

The funds have been building interest in a certificate of deposit account at Regions Bank. Until this year, the money was growing at a 5.12-percent interest rate; the rate currently is about 3 percent. Supervisors have not dipped into the principal.

The supervisors placed $4.1 million of the interest earned since the sale in an interest-bearing account in February; its interest was 5 percent and now is at 2 percent.

The Lehmberg-Warpath land, owned by Tommy Lott, was selected during a Thursday special board meeting — chosen above plots on Martin Luther King Drive near the county jail, North McCrary Road and Hemlock Street and property near Ceco Building Systems on Highway 45 North.

Although the county previously planned to purchase an about 2-acre plot of land off Chubby Drive in North Columbus to construct a health department to replace the more than 50-year-old current facility on Military Road, an IRS tax lien against property owner Don DePriest will keep the county from buying the land, explained County Administrator Ralph Billingsley.

Location, location, location

“I looked at a map, and it looks like the Lehmberg property would basically be in the middle of the population that would be using the facility,” said District 3 Supervisor John Holliman. “As far as location goes, the Lehmberg property would be great.”

Board members also praised the size of the Lehmberg Road property, which is about an acre larger than the other three.

Although the three alternate properties carried price tags between $50,000 and $100,000 less than the Lehmberg Road property, site work required to prepare the three properties for the project likely would have made all prices about the same, said District 1 Supervisor and Board President Harry Sanders.

“The drawings have shown that the Health Department will fit in about 2 acres,” said District 2 Supervisor Frank Ferguson. “If you have an extra acre or so, that”s great. You”re planning for the future.”

Logistics

Even though a traffic signal already is in place at the intersection of Lehmberg and Warpath roads, Columbus city officials likely will have to add a turn lane and a turn signal at the intersection, according to Columbus Mayor Robert Smith.

“You would have to put a turn lane off Lehmberg Road to help people get to the Health Department. That”s a city street, and I don”t foresee any problem doing that or adding a turn signal at that red light,” Smith said shortly before the board predicted it would cost about $50,000 to complete the road changes.

After the land is secured, county officials will work to finalize construction plans before work begins on the new facility. The total cost of the new Health Department is expected to come in at about $3 million, Sanders said.

“We actually have a $600,000 (Mississippi Development Authority Community Development Block) grant for this project, so the total cost to the county is going to be somewhere around $2.4 million,” said Sanders. “All of that is going to be funded with the hospital interest money.”

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