Houston County breaks ground for multiple new Bonaire projects

BONAIRE, Ga. — With clouds hanging in the sky above, Houston County government and community leaders gathered under a small tent, pitched on a cleared piece of property across the street from Bonaire Middle School. Within a year, this land will be the home of Houston County’s new public safety complex — a center containing a new sheriff’s office precinct, a fire station and an ambulance bay — as well as a new medical office building for Houston Healthcare, which will be the home to new expanded medical services.

Those gathered on Wednesday were there to break ground on the construction site. The ceremony was opened by Chris Stoner, Houston County’s fire chief and head of emergency management, who spoke briefly of the history of Bonaire’s current fire station, and the growth Bonaire has seen recently.

“As you all know, the growth in the Bonaire and Kathleen communities has been explosive over the last several years,” Stoner said. “To put that growth in perspective for the fire service, in 2010, the Bonaire-Kathleen station responded to 504 calls within its response area. Ten years later, in 2020, that number had increased to 1,105.

“To date this year, we’ve already responded to 1,260 calls for service — just in the Bonaire-Kathleen area. These numbers only represent call addresses in that particular district. When you account for calls they respond to in surrounding districts, you can see this station stays fairly busy.”

Touting 10,500 square feet, the fire department’s portion of the public safety complex will take the largest share of the building, utilizing approximately 7,000 square feet on their own. The remainder of the space will be used to house a sheriff’s office precinct, using 1,600 approximate square feet, and an EMS station, capitalizing on the remaining 1,900 square feet.

The building will contain several bedrooms for fire department and EMS staff to use during overnight shifts, as well as dayrooms for all three entities residing within.

The fire department will be outfitted with a large training room, exercise room and four truck bays. EMS will have space for an ambulance bay as well, while the sheriff’s office will be able to take advantage of a double-car garage.

“Today, we break ground to expand services and enhance protection of the residents, businesses and visitors in Houston County, and the Bonaire-Kathleen areas,” Stoner said.

Sheriff Cullen Talton, who spoke later in the event, said the construction of the public safety complex was “like a dream come true.”

“I’ve lived in Bonaire all my life, and this community means a lot to me — the whole county means a lot to me, because I love Houston County,” Talton said. “This is going to be a great asset to serving the people, this area and also South Houston County.”

EMS Director David Borghelli was also present to witness the groundbreaking. After the ceremony, he told The Journal this would be Houston Healthcare EMS’s eighth station.

“We’ve noticed over the past few years the volume of medical calls in the Bonaire-Kathleen area have increased exponentially,” Borghelli said. “To have an ambulance stationed here in Bonaire 24 hours a day, seven days a week — it’s going to be a great benefit to out efficiency but more importantly, to the healthcare to the citizens of this area.”

Houston County Commissioner Chairman Tommy Stalnaker stood and acknowledged several groups and individuals, including former, current and upcoming county commissioners, the designers and builders for both of these projects, Robins Air Force Base’s Col. Lindsay Droz as well as many county employees, public safety representatives and officials from the surrounding municipalities.

Before leaving the podium, the chairman spoke of the role public safety plays in Houston County.

“This facility is for all of Houston County,” Stalnaker said. “The segregation should not exist when it comes to public safety — we should help one another, we do help one another, and we can continue to help one another in public safety, and we’re all going to be better off.

“Anytime you need this facility, the response from the facility, it is at your service, I can assure you … I always say when you have a crisis situation with a public safety issue, when it deals with people and property, there are no political boundaries. Help the people, and we’ll figure out the political boundaries at a later time.”

Houston Healthcare’s President and Chief Executive Officer Charles Briscoe stood next and spoke to the audience about the second building that would soon occupy this land: a medical office building.

“The original thought was that we would have a med-stop here,” Briscoe said. “As time moved on, and the project just wasn’t quite ready to move forward for legitimate reasons, we decided as Houston Healthcare to go ahead and do a med-stop, as you all know, down the road here. That was our initial plan.

“That’s been a huge success — it’s been such a success in this community we believe now, it’s time to expand our medical staff, to expand and look at primary care services, to look at specialty service offerings we can provide in this community from a physician office standpoint.”

The new healthcare facility will house a waiting room, patient consultation rooms, 16 private exam rooms along with imaging and lab services on site.

With this new expansion, Briscoe said Houston Healthcare will be able to provide physician access, not only in a time of great need, but for continued, chronic needs that may require a longer standing relationship with medical staff.

Leaving the tent, leaders from Houston County, Houston Healthcare and the local community at large, each picked up a shovel and broke some of the first ground on both construction sites, red dirt flying from golden spades.

According to Briscoe, the new medical building should see completion by late July or August in 2023.

Stalnaker said that the public safety complex would be complete in approximately eight months.

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