Building Demo To Begin in 2025 At Battey Business Complex
Demolition of buildings on the former Northwest Georgia Regional Hospital property, now dubbed the Battey Business Complex, is expected to begin in earnest early next year.
The property is zoned for heavy industrial use and VT Industries is in the works to purchase 21 acres and a building on the property for $1.6 million. Rome-Floyd County Development Authority President Missy Kendrick said she’s hoping that purchase will be completed by the end of the year.
The company, which makes a variety of architectural wood doors and countertops, completed a 40,000-square-foot expansion at its largely landlocked facility in West Rome in 2022. This purchase would allow the company to further expand that location.
Another purchase by a bordering industry comes from Lewis Chemical, which is purchasing 4 acres of the property for $160,000.
The rest of the property, around 100 acres with multiple buildings, will need a little more TLC before it’s able to be put on the market.
Up to this point, the Rome-Floyd County Development Authority has acquired grants for the project from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Approximately $2 million is allocated to clean up asbestos and lead paint on the site and another $5.16 million is for the demolition.
The authority expects to issue a request for proposals on the cleanup portion of the project in October and then move forward with that phase first.
The authority is also filming a documentary, “The Echoes of Hope,” with Brand RED Studios to preserve the stories and history of the site.
The site began as the Battey General Hospital, which was used during World War II, and eventually became a state run and nationally recognized tuberculosis treatment facility.
The property became solely a mental health treatment campus in 1996, as part of Georgia’s mental health treatment network. The state closed the campus for that use, for the most part, in 2010 after the settlement of a federal lawsuit. The property and 60-plus buildings on it lay fallow until it was purchased by the authority using SPLOST funds.