Large New Medical Campus Coming to Eastern Kentucky

By Eric Althoff

LEXINGTON, Ky.—As construction has picked up in Kentucky, one of the largest healthcare projects to be announced lately entails a $1 billion medical campus to be located in Lexington, the largest city in the Bluegrass State’s eastern region and home to medical schools that include  the University of Kentucky College of Medicine.

Announced by the Lane Report, a business outlet covering Kentucky’s business sector, the $1 billion medical campus was announced in late May as part of a partnership between Baptist Health Lexington and the city itself.  Urban County voted its initial approval for the proposed medical complex last month, which will be sited in the Hamburg section of the city.

According to the report, the medical campus will feature a surgery clinic, multistory hospital and a dozen other buildings that mix the use of both medical and retail space.  Two parking structures for patients and medical staff are also part of the plan for the medical facility, whose construction is estimated will bring over 700 jobs to this part of the state.

Baptist Health Lexington also donated three acres of land for the construction of a fire and emergency medical services station that will sit adjacent to the new medical complex.

The Lane Report said that as part of its healthcare development of the area, Baptist will also give city employees flu shots every year for two decades, to commence in 2023.  Furthermore, the city of Lexington has agreed, over the first five years that the facility will be open, to a rebate of 1.25 percent of the new payroll taxes that will be created due to the plethora of jobs that will exist when the construction project has been completed.

Estimates vary, but Mayor Linda Gorton anticipates that the taxes generated at the site will bring in a half-million dollars per annum in payroll taxes for the city.