Franklin withdraws offer to buy Angel Medical Center property
The old Angel Medical Center building was demolished in 2024.
Bob Scott photo
Following a presentation discussing the results of a feasibility study, the Franklin Town Council has withdrawn its offer to buy the property where the Angel Medical Center used to sit for $910,000.
The medical center came under the control of Hospital Corporation of America when HCA purchased the Mission Health System in 2019.
In September 2022, officials cut the ribbon on a new Angel Medical Center building in Franklin, rendering the old building near downtown obsolete.
The old Angel Medical Center building was subsequently torn down, leaving just some retaining walls, basement walls, roadways and rubble where the rural hospital once stood. Following the demolition, the town began exploring the option to buy the property for future development.
In January, the town board voted to spend about $60,000 on a feasibility study to determine potential uses for the property. At the meeting earlier this week, Sara VanLear, a project manager with the UNC School of Government’s Development Finance Initiative, presented the results of that study. The results were not encouraging.
The 13-acre property features tricky topography that would likely lead most developers to balk at the prospect of spending money on grading and other site preparation work. Only about five acres — the footprint of the building itself — would have been immediately developable, and even that likely would have not been worth the time and effort, since there are still those retaining walls and basement structures present that would be difficult to repurpose.
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In her presentation, VanLear noted that while there is strong demand for new residential and commercial construction in Franklin, the eventual sales prices or lease rates required for a developer to profit would be significantly higher than common market rates in the area.
“For a feasibility study, it’s not sounding very feasible to me,” Vice Mayor Mike Lewis said.
While the town board voted in August of last year to offer to buy the property from HCA for $910,000, the vote to withdraw the offer was unanimous.
“This is why we do feasibility studies,” Mayor Stacy Guffey said.
The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality had planned to do a study that could have brought in grant money to finish the site cleanup, including an environmental remediations, but HCA never signed the agreement that would have allowed for DEQ contractors to access the site to complete the study. While it is unknown how much cleanup would be needed, it may be a significant task that would come with a significant price tag.
Now that the town has withdrawn its offer, it is up to HCA to determine what to do with the property. That may mean it sits vacant for some time, HCA may develop it or it could sell the land to a private developer.
Toward the end of the discussion, Guffey lamented how HCA operated throughout the process of determining feasibility and trying to nail down a purchase price.
“This is extremely disappointing after I-don’t-know-how-many hours of staff time and my time negotiating in good faith with HCA,” he said.
