St. Elizabeth Healthcare’s regional chief operating officer gave a presentation to Florence City Council at this week’s meeting to update the city about how its campus here will be spending $90 million allocated to the project.

“We had made the decision a while back that we wanted to move our orthopedic service line off the Edgewood campus onto the Florence campus,” said Bruno Giacomuzzi, COO for Florence and Grant counties. “As you know we built a pretty significant cancer center on our Edgewood campus, and with our cardio-thoracic surgeries it was growing very rapidly, so we had to offload something. So we thought we would just make Florence our Orthopedic Center.”

This slide shows the current entrance to the Florence St Elizabeth hospital and what it will look like on the right.

An endoscopic center on the Florence campus opened last November.

Giacomuzzi said that St. E is renovating 124,000 square feet of space.

This slide shows an aerial view of the hospital.

“We want Florence to be a highly visible location,” Giacomuzzi said. “We want people to know we are here.”

This slide shows the first floor renovation of the hospital.

The third floor of the Endoscopic building will be dedicated to outpatient spine care.

The entire front entrance has been changed, and there will be more parking.

Councilmember David A. Osborne asked how many more employees the project will add to the Florence hospital, and Giacomuzzi said he thought it would add another two to three hundred associates.

“We consider St. Elizabeth one of the crown jewels of our community, and what you all are putting in is very much welcome, and very much appreciated,” said Councilmember Mel Carroll. “It is going to be very well received.”

Proclamations

Mayor Diane Whalen proclaimed May 15 to 22 the 62nd Public Works appreciation week in the city.

EMS appreciation week is also May 15 to 22.

Whalen said back in 1962 President Kennedy declared May 15 National Peace Officer day, and that translates to National Police officer Week, from May 15 to 22.

“We can’t say enough about the people who work in this city,” said Mayor Whalen.

Annexation ordinance passed for Roy Rogers

Council passed the second reading of an ordinance which annexed the 2.391 acres of land into the city so that the Holland Dixie Development LLC can build a Roy Rogers restaurant as well as a Dunkin Donuts and gas station at the corner of Dixie Highway and Industrial road.

Eagle Scout honored

Jakob Walz was honored for his graduation to Eagle Scout.

Jakob Walz was honored at the meeting for graduating as an Eagle Scout. Jakob goes to school at Union Point Academy, and is part of Troop 724. His Eagle Scout project was done at Potter’s Ranch.

Patricia is a contributor to LINK nky.