Water Damage Restoration in Griffin, GA

Georgia healthcare leaders and providers broke ground April 30, 2025, for a new cancer center being built at the Wellstar Spalding Medical Center in the town of Griffin, south of Atlanta.

In a news release, the Spalding County hospital described itself as the public's "dedicated healthcare partner — putting [patients] at the center of … cancer care and helping [them] navigate with clarity, hope and compassion. That's why we're proud to expand our medical oncology and infusion services to better serve our community."

The cancer-care facility promises greater access to advanced treatments and improved convenience for patients in the Griffin-Spalding County community and surrounding areas.

The 6,475-sq.-ft. addition will double Wellstar Spalding's capacity to serve patients while offering high-quality, personalized cancer care.

Among the facility's features are:

• eight patient examination rooms;

• a triage room;

• fourteen infusion chairs;

• two blood-draw stations;

• a dedicated laboratory;

• a waiting area; and

• administration offices and nurses stations.

"At Wellstar, we believe healthcare isn't just about providing services — it's about delivering the right care at the right time with the right heart," said Kevin Smith, Wellstar Health System's senior vice president and president of the Spalding County hospital. "We have made a generational commitment to transform healthcare for all and ensure every person has access to personalized care that helps them spend more time being a person than a patient."

Scheduled to open this winter, the expanded medical center will offer a range of cancer care services, including:

• medical oncology services with partners in care Northwest Georgia Oncology Centers (NGOC), including the latest targeted therapies, immunotherapy and chemotherapy to fight various types of cancer;

• outpatient infusion services;

• an onsite compounding infusion pharmacy for timely medication preparation;

• resources for patient education with a clinical pharmacist and nurse; and

• onsite support services, including an oncology nurse navigator.

"The cancer experts and infusion team at Wellstar and NGOC work together to put people at the center of their care," said Dr. Madhurima Uppalapati, NGOC's president and a medical oncologist and hematologist. "In Spalding County, that means expanding so we can bring innovative infusion treatments like targeted therapy and immunotherapy closer to home.

"More people in Spalding will face cancer with confidence after this new cancer center opens," Dr. Uppalapati said. "The expanded space and cancer services at Wellstar Spalding will allow our compassionate team to offer the support patients need every step of their treatment."

Mixed-Use Project Coming to Georgia Tech Campus

Significant changes around Georgia Tech in downtown Atlanta show few signs of slowing down.

CCI Real Estate, an Atlanta property investment company, has a financing plan in place to move forward with a five-story, mixed-use project at 740 Techwood Dr., less than a block from the Yellowjackets' football stadium, officials from the firm announced in April 2025.

The $18 million construction loan from Alabama-based Southern States Bank, inked with assistance from CCI's debt capital advisor Lance Thurman of Summerhill CRE, will allow developers to replace the longstanding Baptist College Ministries building with residential, retail and ministry spaces.

In addition, the project is moving forward in partnership with the Georgia Baptist Mission Board, which has had a presence on university's campus for 75 years, Urbanize Atlanta reported April 18, 2025.

CCI's plans for the half-acre site call for 55 one-and two-bedroom apartments spread across 64,000 sq.-ft. The mixed-use components include 12,000 sq.-ft of retail and student community space at the ground level, and an upgraded ministry facility.

"This project presents a rare opportunity to bring vibrant, top-of-the-line residential offerings to students in a prime area of campus with curated retail and updated ministry spaces complementing the housing component." noted CCI CEO Jeff Warwick in a news release.

The construction schedule calls for breaking ground later this summer and opening the building in the summer of 2027, according to CCI.

True North Companies in Roswell, Ga., has been selected as the project's general contractor.

CCI's broader goal is to create "missional impact and community transformation." To that end, Urbanize Atlanta noted that the real estate investment firm is also redeveloping the Baptist College Ministry buildings at both the University of Georgia in Athens and Georgia Southern University in Statesboro to include similar mixed-use designs.

Just down the street from the proposed redevelopment of the Baptist College Ministries building, Georgia Tech athletics kicked off a $500 million fundraising campaign in 2024 called "Full Steam Ahead" that could produce upgraded stadium facilities for Ramblin' Wreck football fans, along with basketball and volleyball players.

As part of those efforts, Bobby Dodd Stadium's transformation is set to include a massive videoboard at the south end, along with new club facilities, a speakeasy and an array of deluxe suites. Meanwhile, vertical construction on the stadium's Fanning Center expansion is well under way.

Urbanize Atlanta also noted that near the western fringes of campus, Georgia Tech's first new on-campus residence hall in 50 years is also under construction, with nearly 900 new beds planned for first-year students. It is slated to open August 2026 in time for the fall semester.

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My wife and I made a brief weekend visit to Atlanta and Macon, a couple of weekends ago.

It was a two-part trip.

She wanted to take in an interactive exhibit on the famed Post-Impressionist painter, Vincent Van Gogh, with her sister, in Doraville, on Atlanta’s north side.

She also wanted to attend a student production at her alma mater in Macon, Wesleyan College, which we have been to many times before, and always enjoyed. So we took the weekend off to do both.

She found a newly-restored historic old hotel in Griffin, GA, just north of Macon, and booked us a reservation for that Friday night. We left that morning, and as luck would have it, happened to pull up into the hotel parking lot behind the building, in the middle of downtown Griffin, right behind her sister, who had driven down from the Newnan area. Talk about great timing!

The sister being far more familiar with Atlanta, we were happy to have her drive us to the exhibition hall in Doraville. It was an interesting exhibit, and I learned a lot about Van Gogh that I had not known before – which was very little, to begin with.

He was apparently afflicted with bipolar disorder, which is caused by chemical imbalances in the brain, but nobody knew that, back then (late 1800’s). He may also have been color-blind, which would explain why he used such vivid, bright colors in his paintings: he needed the bright contrasts to distinguish what he was trying to paint.

Perhaps his most famous painting, “Starry Night,” which features large colorful swirls of blue and white above the small and dark town below, was actually the view out of the tiny window he had in his small room in a sanatorium in Arles, in southern France, where he had gone for treatment for his bipolar condition.

I had never heard that before!

We also learned that, although he painted some 2,000 paintings in his ten-year artistic period, he only sold one of them! That must have been terribly depressing.

Others he gave as presents to family members, or in payment for bills, when he had little cash.

Ironically, it was a sister- in-law who recognized his talent, at the time, and managed to save a large number of his canvases.

Sone of them have sold for tens of millions of dollars, in recent years, and are among some of the most famous and most recognizable works of art in our modern times.

(What’s that old saying?

“A prophet is never appreciated in his own time.”) So that, in brief, was our visit to that exhibition. Her sister drove us back to Griffin, stopping off long enough to pick her husband up on the way, and we went to dinner a block away from the hotel, once we got back to Griffin.

Another irony: Anne’s sister had wanted to go to a place called “The Corner Café,” at the other end of the block our hotel was on, because she had heard it was a good place to go.

So we went there – only to find the place was packed, a dozen folks were in line ahead of us, and it was an hour wait (at least) to get seated! (We decided not to wait.)

So we walked across the street to Angelo’s Mediterranean (Greek-Italian) restaurant instead, which had been my original recommendation. It too was full, but we only had two couples ahead of us, and it did not take long to get seated.

The food was good, the service attentive (though they were very busy that night), and I was glad we had the opportunity to experience that place. (Anne and I did go to the Corner Café the next morning for breakfast, before heading back to Macon, and were glad we did. The food was good, and reasonably priced; and they were not as busy that day as they were the night before. So we did get to experience both places, after all.)

Saturday morning we walked around the old downtown section for a bit, and got to take in the historic architecture. The hotel we stayed in was built in 1910, and was apparently quite plush for its time. It closed many years later, and was vacant for a long time, as that downtown experienced the same decline many small towns did. But it was bought by local investors a couple of years ago, restored to its former glory, and now enjoys a booming business.

We would definitely go back! Small towns are the backbone of this country. We had never been “to” Griffin before, just passed by it” or “through it on the way to somewhere else”; so were glad we had the chance to actually “see it” on this trip.

More in the next installment.

Rafe Semmes is a proud graduate of (“the original”) Savannah High School and the University of Georgia. He and his wife live in eastern Liberty County with their passel of orphan rescue cats, and are long-time Rotarians. He writes on a variety of topics, and may be reached at rafe_semmes@yahoo.com.