Plans for county-owned medical industrial park shelved

GAINESVILLE - The economy is too soft, the price not right, for Hall County commission plans to develop a high-tech medical industrial park, according to County Commission Chairman Tom Oliver.

Oliver announced plans for the 535-acre site more than a year ago, but says now the site has challenges and the property owner would not accept the lower price the county offered. It's on Georgia Highway 211 in South Hall, where Northeast Georgia Medical Center plans to build a new hospital.

"We reduced the price we were willing to pay and the owners decided it was not in their best interests to take that," Oliver said Tuesday.

Oliver announced plans for the site in February 2007 during a Greater Hall Chamber of Commerce Economic Development Council meeting at Oakwood City Hall.

At that meeting Oliver said the Crystal Farms property near Chestnut Mountain would be bought by Hall County at an anticipated $35 million - $7 million for development and $28 million for the land.

Oliver said the lower offer came after the county conducted its "due diligence."

"We felt like it had more challenges than we anticipated. We reduced the price of the property that we were willing to pay," Oliver added.

The head of the Hall County Taxpayers Association, Doug Aiken, criticized the proposed land purchase shortly after Oliver's 2007 announcement, claiming the initial cost was too high for the site where more than half the land is too steep to build on and the soil may be too polluted with poultry waste.

At the Economic Development Council meeting in Oakwood a year ago, Oliver said the development would support the new hospital and provide a "footprint for all of Hall County to build upon," but added Tuesday he still has eventual development hopes.

"This economy is soft now but once the economy turns, and it might be three to five years, then those ideas will remain and I think that's the success to it," Oliver said Tuesday.

The property was touted as a future site for a medical industry and research center that would help achieve an industrial tax base goal, which generates revenue as opposed to relying on residential property tax, which consumes revenue in county services.