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Plans unveiled for new medical center
By Bill Conrad, bconrad@acnpapers.com
World-class pediatric medical care may be coming to Southlake as soon as summer 2011 if Children’s Medical Center gets its expansion plans approved.
Representatives from Children’s were in Southlake Monday to share plans with residents at the SPIN No. 3 meeting. At the meeting, Chris Dougherty, vice president of ambulatory services, shared what the medical center would encompass and answered questions from those in the audience.
Dougherty said Children’s Specialty Care Center would be an outpatient facility. He said Children’s hopes to bring all of the outpatient services a patient may need – including ophthalmology, MRI, X-rays, etc -- into one facility.
“In phase two we would like to expand the facility to almost 70,000 square feet,” Dougherty said. “We would love to add additional multi-disciplinary programs as needed and requested by Southlake.”
The property that has been selected spans 10 acres in the 285-acre Carillon Development along State Highway 114.
Dougherty said one concern they have heard from people who live in or near Southlake is that there are no children’s hospitals in the area. Both Children’s Medical Center in Dallas and Cook Children’s Medical Center in Fort Worth are lengthy drives. He said the proposed Southlake facility would allow many of the patients to receive care close to home. According to the video shown by Dougherty, Children’s cared for 522 children from Southlake in the past year, so the hospital would impact a number of families.
One of the questions asked by the audience dealt with how much traffic the hospital would bring to the area. Dougherty said since it was an outpatient center and had no emergency services, ambulances would not be coming and going at all hours of the day. He also said since patients would be seen by appointment only, the traffic increase should be minimal.
Residents have voiced concerns that the center wouldn’t mesh well with the design theme of the Carillon development. The Carillon Web site describes the overall design as French Renaissance with a nod towards contemporary retail centers such as Rodeo Drive.
Jeff Kennemer of Hines – the developer of Carillon – said that while the center wasn’t French Renaissance, he felt it would mesh nicely. Still, he said that they will go back and look at the plans to see if changes need to be made.
Project manager David Cunningham said if all goes as planned, Children’s could get approval to begin building as early as April 2010. If that occurs, they will break ground in June of this year and could be open as soon as July 2011.
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