Case Study: Planning

Fort Loudoun Medical Center

Challenge

Identify a site location for a new replacement hospital in a rural Tennessee county where the geography, existing development patterns and location of major highways created a wide range of travel times to many potential locations. The client's objective was to find a location that would:

1. be centrally located to persons within the primary and secondary service areas
2. provide appropriate space for existing and potential new service lines
3. be complementary to existing hospital support facilities and established physician relationships

Our Approach

Site Selection Criteria
Working with our client, we identified the specific criteria that would achieve the objectives: Availability, Identity and Visibility, Accessibility, Surrounding Land Uses, Utilities, Environmental, and Site Characteristics. We then applied weighting to the criteria to appropriately reflect the relative importance of these criteria.

Identification of Candidate Sites
We compiled an extensive list of potential sites, including sites previously identified by county officials, sites submitted by interested landowners, and sites that we independently identified through maps and field review.

Site Screening
We screened each of the sites through the site selection matrix and identified the final candidate sites.

Site Development and Purchase Costs
A civil engineering firm was engaged to prepare preliminary objective estimates of site development costs for each of the finalist sites. The costs for each site were analyzed to arrive at a cost per developed acre of land.

Success

Realty Trust Group was able to deliver the client an independent review and analysis of eight properties located throughout the county. Our client selected the recommended property and has since purchased the property, and initiated project design and site preparation for a new replacement, 50-bed hospital.