Baptist Hospital announced Wednesday that it will be building a new campus at the intersection of Interstate 110 and Brent Lane.

The new campus will be a full-scale, 250-bed hospital with medical offices. The project is expected to cost around $550 million, provide about 650,000 square feet of patient care space and open in the summer of 2023.

Baptist Heath Care President and CEO Mark Faulkner discussed the move in a press conference, saying it will allow the hospital to provide patients with better access to care and improved services. Faulkner added that the hospital will maintain a “significant presence” at its existing E Street campus, to include the majority of its administrative offices, its system support services and Lakeview Center services.

Faulkner said the move is necessary because Baptist’s existing facility opened in 1951 and was not designed for today’s health care.

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"We've made many investments over the years, but (the current location) is not terribly efficient in terms of the layout, in terms of the productivity, in terms of the technology," Faulkner said. "It has served us well and it will continue to serve us well for the next four years, but we do know that a more efficient, more state of the art delivery will better serve the community going forward."

The new campus will be funded primarily through new debt issuance, according to the hospital. Currently, the project is in a planning phase, and it is set to move into the design phase later this year.

Faulkner said Baptist doesn't anticipate that it will need all of the buildings at the E Street campus once the new complex is built, but at this time, it is still being determined whether those buildings would be torn down or reused for some purpose that would benefit the community.

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"We are committed to this community as we have been for 68 years," Faulkner said. "We want to sit at the table — literally beginning tomorrow — and we are going to assemble a gathering of people from nonprofits, from social agencies, from businesses and the faith community, and we're going to sit down and have this conversation. ... We're going to look at what are the needs of 32501 and how can Baptist Health Care be a partner in better serving those needs."

Hospital administrators noted the new location is just 2.5 miles from the existing campus.

Rumors about the move had been circling in the community for weeks before the formal announcement, and one of the main concerns was that the hospital moving would be an economic blow to workers and patients living in the surrounding area.

Faulkner addressed some of those concerns Wednesday afternoon, noting that the majority of the hospital's employees and patients commute from other parts of the area, and there were far fewer people walking to work or walking in for treatment than people probably suspect.

Escambia County Commissioner Lumon May, who represents the district, discussed some of his thoughts when news broke about the new campus during a County Commission budget meeting.

"It’s exciting and somewhat frightening," he said. "That's 50 acres in the center of the urban core of my district. It has a lot of historical significance in that community and in Morris Court."

May noted that several years ago, the county, the city and Baptist had partnered on a study looking at how to revitalize the area around the hospital, and he said he would be looking to his peers in the city of Pensacola "to make sure we redevelop that area and re-utilize the existing inventory they have to the benefit of the citizens."

Baptist recruited the University of West Florida's Haas Center and other experts to help the hospital select its new location.

Faulkner said Baptist intentionally stayed close to the community it currently serves, noting that a move based purely on potential profit would have taken them farther north toward the growth and development happening around Navy Federal Credit Union.

"This is not an economic decision, this is a community decision," he said.

Baptist Health Care includes three hospitals, four medical parks, Andrews Institute for Orthopaedic & Sports Medicine, Lakeview Center and a large network of primary care and specialty physicians. With more than 6,500 employees and employed physicians, Baptist Health Care is the second largest non-governmental employer in Northwest Florida, according to the hospital.

The project is currently in its earliest planning stages. As plans progress, Baptist will keep the public informed and updated through its website at ebaptisthealthcare.org and through its social media channels @baptisthealthcare.