CHI starts fund drive for future Ringgold hospital
CHI Memorial is asking for the community’s help in reaching a fundraising goal of $5 million for the health system’s replacement hospital in North Georgia, according to hospital officials.
At a kickoff event Tuesday morning, CHI Memorial representatives announced the public phase of its capital campaign — dubbed the Care Closer to Home campaign — for its new hospital planned for Battlefield Parkway in Ringgold.
The cost for the new hospital is $110 million, with $40 million coming from local government bond revenue and $65 million from CHI Memorial’s parent company, CommonSpirit Health, according to CHI Memorial spokesperson Karen Long.
CHI Memorial has also requested $1.5 million in appropriations from the U.S. Senate. The appropriations bill has passed the committee phase and “will hopefully be finalized when the federal budget is approved,” Long said in an email.
So far, 60 donors have contributed almost $3 million dollars, according to campaign Chair Rick Partain, who spoke during the event. CHI Memorial’s goal is to raise the final $2 million by June, according to a news release.
“Every donor will be recognized in the lobby when the construction is complete. It doesn’t matter if you give $5 or a million dollars,” Partain said, as he compared the present fundraising effort to the campaign that helped build Hutcheson Medical Center — which was once housed in the dated hospital building just over 5 miles away in Fort Oglethorpe that the new hospital will replace.
“It goes back to when Hutcheson was built many, many years ago,” Partain said. “My grandmother and my great-aunt
worked at Peerless Woolen Mill down in Rossville, and they took pennies every week out of their paycheck, and to this day, there’s a big bronze plaque up in the old hospital … with their name on it.”
Janelle Reilly, CEO at CHI Memorial, told the crowd of about 30 that the new hospital’s construction is on track. The design phase has been completed, the construction contract is being finalized and building plans were submitted to the state architect a couple of weeks ago, she said.
A groundbreaking event for the new hospital was originally planned for summer 2022, but runaway construction costs — which threatened to increase the price tag for the project by $20-30 million — forced officials to refine their plans.
“The initial construction, starting with the parking, will begin in early December,” Reilly said. “And then the full construction is targeted to be completed late summer/early fall 2025. So all systems a-go.”
The new hospital in Ringgold will feature 64 inpatient beds, an intensive care unit, an emergency department, operating rooms and imaging services, including noninvasive cardiac imaging, according to the news release. It will be attached to CHI Memorial’s ambulatory surgery and cancer center on Battlefield Parkway to create one campus.
Larry Black, chair of the Catoosa County Board of Commissioners, said after the event that Catoosa County is a growing, progressive community that has a need for its own hospital.
“Whether it be heart surgery or some issue with an aneurysm or something like that, we want that immediate care, without having to try to go I-75 to I-24 to get to Tennessee or go to Dalton,” Black said. “It’s critical.”