Redmond to install helipad
Planning commission members also approve some of the Northwest Georgia Housing Authority’s designs for East Rome.
Redmond Regional Medical Center is planning to install a dedicated helipad on its campus, at the corner of Redmond Road and John Maddox Drive.
“We want to improve safety for our medical transport helicopters,” Chief Financial Officer Ken Metteauer said.
Currently, helicopters bringing in or transferring patients land in a grassy area in front of the hospital.
Metteauer said security staff has to block traffic and warn off pedestrians in the area.
Construction plans for the circular landing pad — approximately 70 feet across — will have to be approved by the Federal Aviation Administration. Several light poles will have to be moved to make clearance for the raised concrete structure and half-wall.
Redmond cleared the first hurdle Thursday with a recommendation from the Rome-Floyd County Planning Commission in support of the required special-use permit.
The Rome City Commission will make the final decision following a public hearing at its April 23 meeting, set for 6:30 p.m. in City Hall.
The Planning Commission also sent forward two rezoning applications from the Northwest Georgia Housing Authority, but tabled a third until the authority can produce architectural plans for the site.
All three proposals are connected with the NWGHA’s new Altoview Terrace duplex project in East Rome.
Norman Pleger, director of modernization, said 60 units with a community room, pool and tennis courts would replace the old public housing at Spring Creek and East 14th streets.
The applications presented Thursday would add another 10 units on Maple and East 12th streets.
“We’re expanding public housing,” Pleger told the planning commission members. “They will all be duplexes, brick structures.”
Two applications seek rezoning of lots on the southeast corner of Maple at East 14th. After the remaining house is razed they’ll be combined to house six units, with the entrance to a shared parking lot off Maple Street.
A decision on plans to put four more units on East 12th Street just west of Maple was deferred until at least May. Planning commission members said the area is mainly single-family homes and they want to ensure the duplexes will look more like homes than an apartment complex.
“That is a neighborhood still, at this point, and I think it deserves a little more of our attention,” member Bill Temple said.