Cancer institute HQ going up
Ground broken for $29M building off Holmes Avenue
Saturday, November 05, 2005
North Alabama's largest cancer treatment center is about to get even bigger.
The new $29 million headquarters of the Comprehensive Cancer Institute is quickly taking shape on a rolling, 33-acre site off Holmes Avenue.
A formal groundbreaking ceremony is being held today, but construction on the three-story, 115,000-square-foot building actually began in February. It is scheduled to open next October.
The doctor-owned facility will combine two thriving local oncology practices: the Comprehensive Cancer Institute, currently housed in Huntsville Hospital's Blackwell Medical Tower, and the Center for Cancer Care at Crestwood Medical Center.
Administrator Lee Horton said the institute, which treats about 8,000 cancer patients a year from the Huntsville area and southern Tennessee, should grow rapidly over the next few years as aging Baby Boomers develop more medical problems.
"We feel like the (patient) flow and the care will be better in the new building," Horton said Thursday. "We designed it for the patient."
Founded in 1992 by medical oncologist Dr. Marshall Schreeder, the institute has about 275 employees and is the largest practice of its kind between Birmingham and Nashville.
The new campus will be directly across 14th Street from Butler High School. Schreeder's wife, Lucinda Martin Schreeder, grew up on the property.
The nine cancer doctors involved in the project looked at expanding at Huntsville Hospital and Crestwood, but Horton said neither had enough available space. Parking was also a factor: Many older patients don't like hospital parking garages, she said.
Along with treating people, the institute will seek to get more involved in drug studies and other cancer research overseen by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Schreeder said future studies will allow patients to try cutting-edge cancer medications designed to attack tumors with few side effects. The institute participated in a recent nationwide clinical trial that showed the drug Herceptin, when combined with surgery and standard chemotherapy, is effective against a certain type of breast cancer.
"It's important to offer these early-phase (drugs) to the North Alabama community," Schreeder said Thursday.
The institute plans to maintain smaller offices at both Huntsville Hospital and Crestwood for hospitalized cancer patients.
Huntsville Hospital won't have any trouble leasing the space vacated by the institute, spokesman Burr Ingram said. The institute is an original tenant of the 13-year-old Blackwell Medical Tower; it has grown to occupy parts of four floors.
"We've had no problem, ever, leasing physician office space" in the Blackwell building, Ingram said Thursday.
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