News

Pardee to spend $1 million on new parking lot

A drawing shows the newly acquired 2.7-acre parcel (orange) that Pardee will use for parking. Pink parcel in the bottom left corner is the site of the three-story Health Sciences Building and Pardee Cancer Center on Sixth Avenue at North Oak Street.

By Janet R. Chapin, Published: July 2, 2015

Pardee Hospital is spending almost $1 million to provide parking for the new Health Sciences building in the southwestern corner of the hospital campus.
Facing a parking crunch because the construction and its staging area is taking up half a city block, Pardee officials moved forward on an immediate parking solution and on a long-range plan to provide parking for its employees and patients and the college students and faculty who will be using the new $32 million building.
Last Wednesday morning the Henderson County Board of Commissioners gave Pardee permission to use the Boyd dealership property at Five Points and the county-owned Sixth Avenue Clubhouse property for overflow parking. A few hours later Pardee’s governing board agreed to buy 2.7 acres of wooded land for $300,000 and spend $640,000 to build a new parking lot providing 109 spaces.
“We realize that parking is worth its weight in gold,” County Manager Steve Wyatt told the commissioners. “There is a continuing issue with parking.”
The construction project has eliminated 150 parking slots at the Pardee Medical Office Building, forcing hospital administrators to scramble for alternatives. In one improvisation, employees are parking on a grassy lot the hospital bought on Justice Street.
The county bought the Boyd property in 2013 with the intention of using it for an expansion of Hendersonville High School. But the School Board and school administrators said it would not even begin talking about the HHS plans until mid-2016. Now the property that once showcased shiny new Silverados and Escalades is pressed into service for overflow parking and construction staging.
The county has given general contractor Vannoy Construction permission to park up to five flatbed trailers of steel beams in the corner closest to Five Points.
“That’s the immediate need for it,” Wyatt said. “After that situation, we will be entertaining a whole lot more subcontractors on the site and due to the limitations there would be no place for these contractors to park.”
The Boyd parking lot is six-tenths of a mile from the job site, meaning workers would either walk or get rides. Pardee faces the same challenge.
“We are considering the Boyd parking area as overflow and if it comes to the point that we really need it we will provide a shuttle,” Elizabeth Moss, Pardee’s director of community affairs, told the county commissioners.