Northside Hospital Cherokee CEO Discusses Expansion Plans

Northside Hospital Cherokee is getting a second access point for entering and leaving the hospital campus, which will support current traffic as well as plans for future expansion, CEO Billy Hayes told Canton officials July 18.

The Canton City Council unanimously voted July 18 to approve a request from Northside Hospital Cherokee for city contributions to the construction of a new traffic signal at the hospital.

Northside Hospital Cherokee will build a second entrance to the hospital campus, which would be on Northside Cherokee Boulevard south of the current entrance, according to city documents.

The project is intended to increase safety for patients and visitors of the hospital, provide additional campus access to service vehicles and employees, and reserve the main entrance for individuals coming on campus for care and treatment, according to Northside representatives.

“We have gotten so busy on the campus with traffic coming in and out and traffic backing up on the campus and on Northside Cherokee Boulevard — it’s just creating challenges for everyone, so we need another entrance into the hospital,” Hayes told the mayor and council. “The second entrance will probably be about 300 yards. There will be a traffic light and another four-lane entrance. It will be similar to what we have now, but current access remains the main entrance.”

The traffic signal is expected to go up in 2025, Northside Hospital spokesperson Katherine Watson told the Tribune.

The second entrance will also decrease current and future access delays for first responders due to traffic, while also further connecting the Northside Cherokee campus to Northside Cherokee Boulevard and state highways as a regional transportation corridor, Watson said.

Representatives of Northside are expecting the cost to put a signal at the intersection to be up to $600,000. The city has agreed to contribute one third of the cost, or $196,529, upon completion of the work.

The Cherokee County Board of Commissioners have committed up to $200,000 to go toward the project.

Northside Hospital Cherokee is expected to pay up to $200,000, and would be reimbursed through roadway impact fee credits per a development agreement from June 7, 2012, according to city documents.

The request for funding to create a second entrance is an extension of the partnership between Cherokee County, the city of Canton and Northside Hospital Cherokee to build Northside Cherokee Boulevard and provide access to the hospital.

During the July 18 meeting, Hayes also provided an update to the city council on future expansion plans for the campus over the next several years.

“We realized about a year and a half ago that we need to come up with another 10-year plan — we completed that (plan) about six or eight months ago,” Hayes said.

Part of this first phase of expansion is building a parking deck adjacent to the women’s center. The deck will feature about 1,400 parking spaces.

“We realized when COVID was over and people started visiting family members that we had a parking issue,” Hayes said. “This deck will help solve the current parking issue that we have by offering about 1,400 more parking spaces.

The hospital also plans to move the current helipad to a different location on the campus in the future to make room for the construction of a new patient tower to bring in more operating rooms, Hayes said. The tower will run parallel to the Women’s Center and will open with six floors initially and add about 240 to 250 beds when complete, Hayes said.

The first phase of the tower is expected to be built in late 2027 to January 2028, with plans to expand it to 10 floors in the future.

There are also plans to build another medical office building on the campus.

“Right now, we are also designing another medical office building to put on the campus and another parking deck to support that — the building would be about 125,000 to 150,000 feet and we will need additional parking with about 750 parking places to it,” Hayes said. “We then will evaluate the need for another parking deck on campus — probably looking at somewhere around 750 parking spaces. We will be coming back to you and asking for this within the next six months or early next year.”

Hayes added that, currently, the hospital has nearly 4,000 employees, including over 1,800 on the medical staff.

“We will probably need about 500 or so more employees and 100 more physicians just to open up this first phase,” he said.

Canton Mayor Bill Grant said that he is “excited about the future plans,” adding that they are “quite impressive.”