- November 15, 2024
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The Flagler County Free Clinic is a bit short on space. So is the County Health Department, which administers the federally-funded supplemental food program called WIC, for Women, Infants and Children.
But both services might be able to get new digs on land along S.R. 100 now owned by Florida Hospital Flagler, County Administrator Craig Coffey told County Commission during a commission workshop Feb. 1.
Florida Hospital Flagler, which owns the land, has offered to let the county use it for free.
Placing the Free Clinic and the Health Department together on that site would be "developing a campus," Coffey said, and would free up the county to use the former jail site for county storage or other county departments, and reserve the current Sheriff's Operations site for future expansions at the Sherif's Office.
But it would also mean knocking down a building on the Florida Hospital Flagler-owned site and building a new one in its place, and adding parking.
That work would cost about $1.5 million, Coffey said, but the county might be able to save was much as $600,000 by doing some of the construction work in-house.
There's also a block of land across the street from the hospital-owned site that is for sale, with an asking price of about $300,000. A dilapidated building on the site would cost about $150,000-$200,000 to demolish, Coffey said, but the county might be able to buy the land for use in the future.
Two other options to accommodate the expanding clinic and Health Department— building a new building on the Sheriff's Operations site in the place of the former hospital building wings, at a cost of $1,500,000 (or $600,000 less if the county does the work); or, renovating the now-dilapidated wings of the old hospital building and building new parking around them, at a cost of about $2.25 million — didn't get much support from commissioners.
The commission, by consensus, directed county staff to move forward with plans to use the Florida Hospital Flagler-owned site, and to check into buying the plot of land across the street.
