Gulf Pines Hospital

At some future point up the road, someone in a position to make a decision will have to make one about Gulf Pines Hospital.

The question of ownership of the building and land on which it sits in the middle of Port St. Joe remains murky, at best, even as bankruptcy proceedings have reached an end stage.

Medical Capital, the California-based lender who forked over some $1.7 million to former hospital administrator Hu Steeley over five years ago to stave off the inevitable for a few months would seem largely uninterested in the building, save to plunder any scrap as would be its right for its fiscal foolishness.

The company built its business on loans against accounts receivable and would seem unlikely to be in the frame of mind for developing something from the facility.

The company hardly seems a community partner in making what is best out of the mess Steeley left in his wake.

And since the land is no longer home to a hospital, competing deeds with competing reverter clauses which neither party – be it The St. Joe Company or the City of Port St. Joe – appears to have much interest in exercising come into play pertaining to ownership.

This leaves a blight compounding by the day.

There is general upkeep of the building, but the facility is wide open, unlocked, and the same roofing supplies Steeley once professed to be poised to use to cure one of the main issues behind the hospital’s closure by the state remains on the roof more than seven years later.

The land is not worth its full value in this real estate market but at some point it will gain in value to make it attractive.

The primary issue will be the building itself, which will surely require asbestos abatement at the least and razing at the most.

The costs of either are prohibitive against the current value of the land.

But at some point in the not-that-distant future the equation will change and regardless of that timetable there is a matter of a building decaying before everybody’s eyes in one of the more attractive portions of town.

From a viewpoint of the Port St. Joe Redevelopment Agency, all the work going into beautifying Highway 98 in downtown might one day become mitigated in part for travelers from the east by the sight of a shuttered rundown former hospital just inside the city limits.

The city, in partnership with St. Joe Company if it is willing, should begin to explore what options are available. Action should be taken with full caution at this point, but this is an example where government can be, and should be, proactive.

In the middle of one of the more stately and historic areas of the county sits the embodiment of another era, the memories that once bounced through its halls now seeping through open doors and cracked roofs.

When the time arrives, the city and/or St. Joe should be poised to take appropriate action to ensure that the final memory of Gulf Pines Hospital is not one of blight upon the city and its residents.