Growers Market Being Converted to Ambulance Station
Posted on Tuesday, November 26th, 2024
Features of the former Growers Market Building on hospital grounds at 466 Legacy Park Lane are leading to its immediate conversion to medical services. Mercy Health Love County Hospital administrator Scott Callender addressed the topic last week.
“We have to serve the medical needs of the community first and our priority right now is to get our ambulance station and emergency department back to full strength,” he said.
The Growers Market Building has been out of commission since the April 27 tornado gashed and collapsed a portion of its roof. The damage has since been repaired.
Love County EMS ambulance service has drawn up a new interior design of bedrooms, bathrooms, showers, dining and meeting space, and medical supplies area.
Carpentry and plumbing work will begin immediately, in hopes of having the conversion finished by the time a temporary emergency department, now under construction on the opposite side of Legacy Park Lane, is complete in the spring.
“It is cost-effective and a quick turnaround to convert the Growers Market Building into an ambulance station,” Callender said.
The building opened in 2016, covers 4,200 square feet, and includes garage doors on three sides and 2,400 square feet of awning on the south side. On the north side is a back-up generator and an enclosed set of decontamination showers. On the east is a separate 16’ x 30’ storage building.
“Right now, the ambulance staff needs a suitable place to sleep overnight, and when the temporary emergency rooms open, the physician assistants also will need a place to stay,” Callender said. “There are extra bedrooms for growth of the EMS or for adding medical students to other departments,” he added.
A total of four ambulances will fit under the existing awning and sides will be added to the awnings to fully enclose the vehicles. “Immediately we will be able to park two ambulances, one for emergencies and the other for transfers,” Callender said.
That is more ambulance service than in the former EMS Station 1 on the hospital’s west end, which, along with an EMS training center, had to be demolished after the tornado.
The Station 1 crews temporarily moved into the former Ford dealership at 1300 Memorial Drive, which has been owned by the hospital since 2019 but not occupied. That building, which dates to 1989, is not as capable of being rapidly renovated or as close to the emergency room going up on Legacy Park Lane, Callender said.
Since 2016, an informal growers’ market operated seasonally and the Growers Market Building also housed the offices and activities of the Love County Senior Volunteer Program.
The tornado displaced those services. While an outdoor vegetable market set up for the summer on Main St., the Senior Volunteers moved their supplies to an office in the Social Services Building on hospital grounds. They turned to area churches and the Fair Building for holding large-group events.
The Social Services Building, new in 2014, has a new roof and in a few months will be ready to re-open, Callender said. Prior to the tornado, the hospital offered tenancy in the building, at no charge, to the Department of Human Services, Lighthouse behavioral health agency, and Love County Emergency Management.
Emergency management has made a permanent move to the Love County Justice Center, allowing the Senior Program to take over its office space and use the building’s Board room.
Since 2001, another community service of the hospital has been a food pantry serving the hungry and food insecure of Love County. Its building was demolished after the tornado, and the food pantry was moved temporarily to the former Greenville School cafeteria.
In 2020, a different calamity, COVID-19, forced the closure of the Adult Day Center owned and operated by the hospital. Since the tornado, the building, at 200 Wanda St., has been repaired and reopened to house the hospital’s administrative offices.
Callender said he was glad to have kept the Ford and Adult Day Center buildings. “We might have sold the empty buildings in 2022, but Jack Testerman (late chair of the Hospital Board of Control) cautioned not to. He said, ‘You never know when you may need them.’”
At its regular monthly meeting on November 22, 2024, the Hospital Board of Control voted to continue supporting the food pantry, the Social Services Building, and to allot two offices in that building to the Senior Program.