BIRMINGHAM, AL-It is safe to say that cheers went up inside the headquarters of two separate entities in Birmingham in recent weeks after it was announced that the Alabama Supreme Court refused to hear any further arguments against a local hospital’s quest to move into a new– but never completed– building on US 280.
By putting a legal end to a challenge from two area hospitals, the Alabama court, in effect, has allowed Trinity Medical Center of Birmingham to move forward with its plans to spend about $280 million to complete construction on, and then relocate to, the 1-million square foot hospital structure on a hill overlooking the busy highway. The building was about halfway complete in the early 2000s as the future home to HealthSouth Corp.’s Digital Hospital. However, a massive accounting fraud put a halt to construction a couple of years later.