Medical and retail center in South MS moves ahead despite conflict with county, hospital
Legacy Park soon will be under construction in South Mississippi, with or without the support of Jackson County Supervisors and Singing River Health System, the developers contend.
Groundbreaking was held Jan. 25 at the site on Mississippi 57 in Gautier, just north of U.S. 90, and the developers said they hope to start building in about three months.
The $25 million Phase I will encompass the first 20 acres of the property, owned by local surgeons Sati Adlakha, D.O. and Dr. Ed Tasan, M.D.
It will include a medical complex with a cardiac surgery center, vascular surgery center, endoscopy suite, a 25,000-square-foot medical office space for primary care and specialties, plus a building for Deaconess, a national home health agency operating in South Mississippi.
The first phase also will have an 11,000-square-foot retail center, with spaces already being leased by Southeast Commercial.
The adjacent 35 acres will provide space to build condos, a children’s park, a walking path around the detention pond and eventually a national flagship brand hotel for a total investment of about $55 million.
The City of Gautier provided a $3 million tax increment finance bond to help cover some of the cost of infrastructure for the project. Jackson County Supervisors have denied any financial assistance, saying the medical complex will be in competition with the county-owned hospital.
“This project is going forward,” Adlakha said, but it could go faster and create jobs more quickly with the supervisors’ support, he said.
Plan for outpatient surgery
Both doctors specialize in interventional cardiology and live and work in Jackson County. They have privileges to practice at Singing River Health System and other hospitals in South Mississippi, as do the other doctors who will work at the new medical center, he said.
Last year they applied for and since were granted a certificate of need from the state health department to build the cardiac care center with four catheterization labs.
These outpatient surgery centers have equal outcomes to in-hospital surgeries, Adlakha said. The difference is patients can get a pacemaker or heart stent and go home the same day — at half the price of a hospital stay, he said.
Singing River Health System is appealing the decision to issue the certificate of need, he said, but there already are two other facilities of this type approved in the state, in Jackson and Hattiesburg.
City’s in, county’s out
Mississippi requires an outpatient surgery center to partner with a hospital.
Adlakha said they asked Singing River to join as partners, but when that didn’t happen, the doctors instead partnered with Memorial Hospital in Gulfport.
The two health systems have been in competition for patients, clinics and doctors, and the competition increased when Singing River took over operation of Garden Park medical center in Gulfport.
Jackson County Supervisor Ken Taylor said nothing has changed since the county and hospital wrote a letter last spring objecting to the new medical facility in Gautier.
He said there here have been some informal discussions between the hospital and the doctors regarding partnerships.
“They have not been able to come to any kind of agreement,” he said.
Taylor said the county offered to be a major partner, but the percentage of ownership was so low that SRHS could not agree to the proposal.
Adlakha said Legacy Park is much more than medical, and said they’d be happy to take a TIF for development outside the medical park.
