Piedmont Healthcare, parent of Piedmont Hospital, will operate a future outpatient/ambulatory center for Piedmont Hospital out of 75,000 square feet of Class A medical office space at the northwest corner of Howell Mill Road and I-75, the site of the present Holiday Inn and adjacent barbecue restaurant.
Piedmont Healthcare signed the lease with real estate service company Carter, which will develop the Piedmont West complex on approximately seven acres of land that will include a 275,000 square-foot building, a 150-room InterContinental brand hotel and some 20,000 square feet of retail space with ample parking facilities.
The Piedmont Healthcare facility will serve as an outpatient/ambulatory facility for Piedmont Hospital, in an effort by the hospital to reduce the congestion around the area of Peachtree Road and Collier Road. Residents in the Collier Heights, Ardmore Park and other neighborhoods surrounding Collier and Peachtree roads have been complaining for years about the congestion caused by hospital traffic and have sought the hospital’s help in identifying ways to reduce that congestion by seeking satellite care facilities.
Some hospital services that do not require the use of hospital facilities will be moved to the Piedmont West property, the hospital administration has announced, although those specific services have not yet been identified.
Although a precise timetable has not yet been announced, Carter hopes to soon begin demolition of the present facilities on the Howell Mill Road site and break ground on the new Piedmont West development, which is directly across Howell Mill from the new District at Howell Mill shopping center that recently was developed by Selig Enterprises.
Michael Koblentz, chairman of the Northwest Community Alliance, told the Buckhead Reporter that he had learned demolition of the Holiday Inn facility would begin in February.
Carter has assembled enough property so that cars will enter and exit its new development, as well as the existing Citgo service station at the site, at the new traffic signal that Selig Enterprises had installed at the entrance to the District at Howell Mill.
Selig Enterprises also paid to have a new state-of-the-art traffic signal synchronization system installed along Howell Mill Road from I-75 to Chattahoochee Road as part of the development of its shopping center and in conjunction with the planned widening of Howell Mill west of the shopping center and through the intersection with Chattahoochee Road. Construction on that road project is reportedly to begin this spring or early summer.