Plans for a behavioral health facility on S. Carlin Springs Road are raising questions about the future of a nearby county-owned parcel.
Forestry and Natural Resources Commission member Alex Sanders took a moment at a July 23 meeting to ask about the county’s plan for a 4.5-acre site near VHC Health’s proposed behavioral health and rehabilitation center.
“It just kind of sits there and wastes away, year after year,” Sanders said.
“The county has not really taken any initiative to do anything with that site,” Sanders said. “I think the county needs to advance some kind of proposal.”
County Board member Susan Cunningham was present at the commission meeting. She said a plan for the county’s portion of the 11.6-acre site at 601 S. Carlin Springs Road is coming, but will take time.
“The hospital has to get designed first,” she said.
County officials in January 2023 agreed to sell or lease 5.8 acres of the Carlin Springs site to VHC Health to accommodate its plans for a new facility on the southern portion of the parcel.
The county will retain the acreage north of the VHC site, but to date, county leaders have said little about what someday may go there.
“It’s a perfectly valid question,” Cunningham said at the meeting. “It will get sorted out over time. I don’t think it will get lost.”
In the county government’s recently adopted FY27-36 capital improvement plan (CIP), about $4.3 million in funding is included for the site in fiscal year 2029 and $2.2 million for fiscal year 2030. That’s enough to begin planning and design for a future use, but it would likely be nowhere near enough to start construction on whatever use may materialize.
The CIP provides no further funding for the site through fiscal year 2036, although that could change in future incarnations of the document. County Board members will next update the capital plan in 2028.
David Howell, another Forestry and Natural Resources Commission member, said the short-term future for the county’s portion of the site would be as a staging area for VHC’s construction activities.
“What we should be trying to do is have the absolutely best VHC facility that can be created there,” he said.
As for the future use of the north parcel, “we’ll take it in steps,” Howell said.
In May, the first meeting of a site plan review committee (SPRC) for VHC’s proposal was convened. Responding to issues raised at that meeting, officials with the hospital organization asked for more time to come back with a revised proposal. The second and, potentially, last SPRC meeting will be held in September or later.
VHC Health and Tennessee-based Lifepoint Health have formed a joint venture to build and manage the new facility. The hospital organization will own a majority stake in the partnership, but the two organizations will have equal representation on its board of directors, the partners said in a recent meeting convened by the Glencarlyn Civic Association.
