It is now just a matter of time before the newest addition to Newnan’s Ashley Park commercial area will get underway. Representatives of the new Cancer Treatment Centers of America (CTCA) hospital told members of the Coweta County Development Authority recently that construction of the 200,000 square-foot facility should begin before the end of the year.
CTCA representatives spoke earlier this month at the “Lunch at the Carnegie” event sponsored by Newnan Carnegie Library Foundation. Expectations are that construction on the regional cancer hospital in Ashley Park near I-85 will begin before the end of this year. Once open, the facility is expected to bring 500 new jobs and $500 million in new investment to the local economy over the next five years.
Donald P. Braun, vice president of clinical research for CTCA, and Carolyn Lammersfeld, national director of nutrition, said that their hospital has a different slant than most, treating the “whole patient” and not just the tumor.
CTCA board member Annie Holsonback, daughter of founder and board chairman Richard J. Stephenson, said the company’s philosophy of treating patients more like family members began when her grandmother was diagnosed with cancer in 1981.
CTCA Public Relations Manager Kristin Schaner previously said that the hospital will have more than 200,000 square feet, adding that the all-digital Newnan facility will offer a new choice in cancer treatment.
As with its other facilities around the country, CTCA is expected to draw a large number of its patients from far beyond the traditional geographic areas served by traditional hospitals providing cancer treatment.
“With more than two-thirds of its patients expected to come from outside the state of Georgia, patients and their families will contribute to the growth and vitality of the local economy,” Schaner said. “CTCA expects the new facility to generate 500 new jobs and $500 million in economic activity over the first five years of operation.”
That local economic activity is music to the ears of the Coweta County Development Authority (CCDA). The organization worked with CTCA throughout the company’s selection process that had considered a number of other sites around the metro Atlanta area before deciding on Newnan.
The first CTCA facility opened in 1988. Today CTCA has hospitals in Tulsa, Philadelphia and Goodyear, Ariz. The Newnan facility, the company’s first into the South, will serve as the CTCA hub for the Southeastern U.S.
CTCA has experienced 20 percent annual growth since 2005 and treated 4,500 new patients in Fiscal Year 2010, company officials said.
