Mayor says when driving south on Main Street ‘there will be a wow factor’
It is finally coming to fruition. A ground breaking ceremony is planned for 9:30 a.m. tomorrow (Friday, July 31) at the corner of State Highway 62 and 16th Street for the new Chickasaw Nation Health Newcastle Medical Center.
The City of Newcastle has been working with the Chickasaw Nation for the past five years on planning for what is to come including infrastructure needs in the area.
At the recent Coffee with the City gathering, Newcastle Mayor Karl Nail said, “You are going to start seeing this amazing dfacility rise out of the ground.”
He said when it is built and you are driving south on Main Street, “There will be a wow factor.”
He noted that it will be under construction for the next 12 years in three phases.
“They will spend a little more than a billion dollars on phase 1,” Nail said. “If all goes right with Phase 1, they’ll be planning Phase 2 during the earlier construction, and then roll right into construction with Phase 2.”
The hospital and a clinic structure will be part of Phase 1, and then additional clinic structures will be built later on. Nail said there will be about 50 rooms at first, but then there will be about 150 rooms when all phases are complete.
He said Phase 1 will include a pharmacy with drive-thru lanes built on the northwest corner of the property.
Newcastle has been working towards the start of construction for some time, but possibly no amount of planning can have us totally prepared, according to the mayor.
“When they start construction, they’ll have 600 to 800 people working on that site every single day for the next 12 years,” Nail said. “They’ll need places to stay and places to eat.”
When construction is completed on the facility, Nail said there will be people from all over the country coming to Newcastle to get their health services in either Ada, Durant, Tahlequah or Newcastle.
He said the existing facilities are some of the finest native hospitals in the country, but they won’t hold a candle to this facility.
“They will be offering services that other Native Amercian facilities in the country do not offer,” Nail said. “They know there will be people from all over the country coming here for semi-annual checkups, for scans, catheterization procedures, obstetrics/gynecology needs, and dental work.”
Nail said they, and their families, will be coming to Newcastle for up to a week at a time.
“They anticipate birthing 10-20 babies at that facility every single day,” Nail said. “Families, grandmas and grandpas, will be coming and needing services in Newcastle, as well.”
The mayor said major developers have been anticipating dirt moving on the project, and once they see it turn, there will be interest from all over the country.
As City planning has been ongoing, one of the goals by the City Council is to keep Newcastle as Newcastle.
Nail said, “We don’t want to become any other community’s replica.”
They do anticipate commercial development such ancillary business to the hospital and have been working towards generating revenue.
“This is a great opportunity to get some more sales tax generators to maybe tip the scales on residents versus commercial. Maybe build up that commercial when we have been so residential in the past,” Nail said. “We are doing everything we can to set Newcastle up to be attractive to commercial developers.”
Among side issues the City and the Chickasaw Nation have been working on are water agreements. Since the Chickasaw Nation is a sovereign nation, they are treated by the City just like Tuttle or Goldsby is treated concerning water usage.
Nail said they will have a service availability contract where their highest usage gallons of water during the year, such as during the summer months, will be what they buy from Newcastle every month.
The City has to pay for the highest usage it has when it purchases water from Oklahoma City, so this will be passed on to the Chickasaw Nation and will protect Newcastle residents from the facility’s water demand.
The City has been, and continues to be, working on better water capacity in the area. This is not just for the hospital, but also for the nearby residential areas.
The City of Newcastle is also working on roads projects to better accommodate travel to and from the area of the facility and around Newcastle.
