After months of rumors floating around the community, South Florida Baptist Hospital finally announced it intends to relocate.
The hospital said the move is being made to “improve access to health care services for the community it serves.”
SFBH is currently located on Alexander Street. It’s boxed in by what is arguably the busiest street in town with restaurants on one side, an office plaza on the other and homes directly behind it. It opened in 1953 and has had 12 major additions, renovations and expansions since then. Further growth is difficult to achieve, so the new proposed location, off of Exit 22 of I-4 east of the East Sam Allen Road and North Park Road intersection, would allow such growth to happen.
SFBH said the proposed location is highly visible and in a high-growth area. The new building’s plans feature up to 150 private patient rooms with the option of adding another 30 in a future expansion. An 85,000 square-foot medical office building is also proposed at the new location. This “will be convenient for both patients and physicians who prefer to work near the hospital.”
“We are committed to providing extraordinary care to our patients and are excited about the opportunity to build a new hospital to extend this mission as we continue to serve our patients in Plant City and the surrounding communities,” South Florida Baptist Hospital President Karen Kerr said.
The project is currently in the very early planning stages. Everything has yet to be approved by the city, but SFBH said construction is expected to begin in summer 2021 and should take about 30 months to complete. The project has an estimated cost of $326 million.
“After 67 years, we have run out of room to expand the hospital on its present site,” Kerr said. “Also, retrofitting the hospital’s infrastructure to meet the growing technological advances in health care solutions is often an expensive and challenging option. Because of that, we feel that to better meet the growing needs of our community, we need to relocate and build a new hospital.”