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Northern Kentucky Health Department breaks ground on new district office at Florence Government Center


NKyTribune staff

The Northern Kentucky Health Department broke ground Friday at its new district office to be located in the Florence Government Center.

Northern Kentucky Health Department District Director of Health Dr. Lynne Saddler talks about the role of the Department and the new facility at the Florence Government Center Friday. A rendering of the new building is at right (photos by Mark Hansel).

The new building will bring staff providing district-wide services together in a single location. A combined location will create a more cohesive and collaborative working environment between programs that need to work together, increase efficiency and reduce costs due to travel and offsite storage.

Of the 150 Health Department employees, 95 will be consolidated from existing offices in Edgewood, Fort Mitchell, Covington and Florence.
Programs to be located on the four acre site in Florence include:

  • Office of the District Director of Health
  • Administrative staff
  • WIC and nutrition administrative staff
  • Health education
  • Oral health
  • HIV/AIDS case management
  • Epidemiology
  • Disaster preparedness
  • Environmental health

The Health Department’s county health centers in Covington, Florence, Newport, and Williamstown will not move.
Northern Kentucky Health Department District Director of Health Dr. Lynne Saddler, said it has been a long process and credits all of the community stakeholders, including the building committee, the Health District Board and the staff, for making it possible.

Guests at Friday’s groundbreaking included Produce Man, the Northern Kentucky Health Department mascot.

“In public health, so much of what we do is behind the scenes, focused on preventing bad things from happening,” Saddler said. So, oftentimes people don’t realize everything that we are doing. When we vaccinate children so that they don’t get diseases, there’s not an outbreak. When we are inspecting restaurants, people don’t get sick when they eat out.”

The two-story, 40,000-square-foot building will include offices, meeting and training space. It will be constructed by the Paul Hemmer Company with KZF Design.

Florence Mayor Diane Whalen said the goal of the Florence Government Center when the campus was developed 20 years ago was to make it a community resource.

“This property was purchased with the idea that we would be working on a government-type campus,” Whalen said. “We do think the decision to be here on this site reflects a really good match for the Health Department. The due diligence that went into finding this location, going through the process to identify the best spot to build their district building (is) certainly something that I think everybody should be proud of and not a decision that they came to lightly.”

The total cost for the new offices will be $5.34 million, which includes $4.8 million for construction and $540,000 for purchase of the land.

The Health Department anticipates being able to purchase property and build the new facility within existing funds and with no increase in local public health taxes.

Construction will begin this month and is scheduled for completion in early 2018.


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