Fort Mill has its new hospital. Here’s what MUSC needs to build another in Indian Land
The brand new shine isn’t yet off Fort Mill’s first hospital, as plans further develop for a second in the township area.
The Medical University of South Carolina applied for and received a certificate of need from the state to build a 100-bed hospital in Indian Land. It’s the same number of beds approved for Piedmont Medical Center — Fort Mill, the long-awaited hospital that opened earlier this month at the corner of S.C. 160 and U.S. 21 Bypass in Fort Mill. MUSC bought property off U.S. 521 in Indian Land two years ago.
That property for the proposed hospital is 85 acres on Charlotte Highway between its Thousand Oaks Road and Windsor Trace Drive intersections. The property is east of the main highway, about midway between the two major connections between Indian Land and Fort Mill at the S.C. 160 and Dobys Bridge Road intersections.
Yet the property has constraints.
MUSC applied for an amendment to Lancaster County rules related to highway corridor zoning, which the property has now. A request to exempt the project from a host of land use rules was voted down by the planning commission Tuesday night. Lancaster County Council still gets to vote on the proposal.
The county has separate work ongoing to update its ordinances related to land use, and changes needed for the hospital could still be worked through using that route. There was concern Tuesday night among the planning commission that exempting the hospital project entirely from highway corridor development requirements could weaken land use development rules.
The particular hangup involves parking. County rules require parking behind the building, while the hospital group also wants it facing the highway.
“This building should be moved forward and the parking put behind it,” said Planning Commission Chair Charles Deese. “If we allow it this time, then the floodgates open.”
Sam Walker, who spoke Tuesday on behalf of the development group, said the exemption request is almost exclusively related to parking. There are site features Walker referenced, pointing to a submitted layout of the new healthcare features. Wetlands and streams there limit the buildable area to about 30 acres.
“Really what you see here on the site plan is the buildable area,” Walker said.
MUSC plans involve a 90,000-square-foot medical office building before the hospital even opens. The first phase office building would have a new access off Charlotte Highway central to the property, that it would later share with the hospital. The hospital would add a second access point farther south.
“What MUSC intends to do is hire physicians and staff in this area, generate their brand and give the patients the opportunity to receive care before the hospital is built,” Walker said.
That plan involves an array of medical services in the first phase office building.
“It is a cancer center,” Walker said. “It’s imaging. It’s orthopedics, primary care, women’s care, etc. Services that the community needs.”
Apart from urban hospitals, Walker said parking on only one or two sides isn’t done or conducive for medical facilities. On this particular site, parking only away from the highway would mean orienting the medical buildings similarly and facing chillers, generators, boilers and the like toward U.S. 521 traffic. Then, there’s the size of a parking lot that would be needed if it alone serves the site with 340 spaces.
“A cancer patient, perhaps, who has to walk 600, 700, 800 feet to the front door,” Walker said.
Ambulances, CT or MRI mobile imaging vehicles, janitorial services and others would need parking accommodations Walker said current rules don’t provide.
“All these people need access to the building,” Walker said, “and the current ordinance is prohibitive to do that.”
Existing standards for highway corridor zoning were in place by 2016, prior to the MUSC property purchase. County staff and planning commission members have discussed what rules may be amended specific to the site, and what concessions the county might ask within the development in response.
Walker points to a collector road study that shows a proposed public road connection through the property. Developers are working to create a new signal and public road through the site, something that typically wouldn’t be done with a medical development of this kind, as part of its pitch to work out the parking.
“We are offering to connect (U.S.) 521 to Henry Harris (Road) through this campus which limits, quite frankly, the flexibility and future opportunities for our campus,” Walker said.
The new Indian Land hospital is just the latest plan to serve a growing number of people in the township. Fort Mill and Indian Land each have grown at rates seldom seen in the region since Piedmont Medical Center planned and applied for a 100-bed Fort Mill hospital two decades ago. Fort Mill more than tripled its population since 2000, which doesn’t include unincorporated Fort Mill growth like Baxter. Indian Land at times has grown at an even higher rate.
Numerous healthcare providers have set up doctor, urgent care and specialty offices throughout the area. Piedmont built a standalone emergency room on Gold Hill Road. A rehabilitation hospital is in planning for the Pleasant Road are in Fort Mill. Several more senior living sites have been set up with memory care or other medical services, like Wellmore in Tega Cay or The Blake at Baxter Village.
When the new Indian Land hospital was announced, MUSC stated it would involve moving beds from a Lancaster facility to the panhandle to meeting growing population needs there.
This story was originally published September 21, 2022 at 12:06 PM.
