Hamlin Town Center announces plans for cancer-treatment facility

HORIZON WEST The highly anticipated Hamlin Town Center project, an 850-acre mixed-use development at New Independence Parkway and State Road 429, announced the first medical facility to be included in its medical complex: a proton therapy center.

The center will be the first piece of a 25-acre medical complex, which will be located on the west side of State Road 429. The complex is a joint venture between Provision Healthcare LLC and Hamlin Retail Partners West — an LLC that includes Boyd Development Corporation and real-estate agency Schrimsher Properties. It also will have other medical offices built that should be generated as a result of the proton therapy center’s presence. 

With fewer than 25 proton therapy centers nationwide, the official news was welcomed by Ken Kupp, partner at Boyd Development Corp.

“We’re very excited; it’s a cutting-edge treatment facility,” Kupp said. “Its growing use throughout the cancer industry and its benefits are significant over other treatment options. There are very little side effects, and it’s very targeted in terms of treating the cancerous cells and limits the impact on surrounding tissues. You can go and have your treatment in the morning and then be off on a golf course in the afternoon because it just doesn’t have much side effects. So it’s kind of the way of the future.”

The proton therapy center will be a two-story building of about 30,000 square feet and will have three treatment rooms, plus a medical office in the rest of the building. They project the center will see 800 to 1,000 patients a year, Kupp said, and generate about 100 clinical and administrative jobs.

“It’ll benefit the local community through job generation,” Kupp said. “These are all well-paying jobs, and that’s great, but the benefit of the proton therapy goes really beyond the local community. It’s really more of a regional project in the sense that we expect people from all over Central Florida will come to be treated there. So we see it as a fairly wide-ranging project in terms of its benefits to the overall Central Florida community.”

The center’s proton-systems technology will be built by ProNova Solutions, a Provision Healthcare affiliate. It will use the latest “pencil beam” radiation technology, which is highly effective in destroying cancerous tumors while sparing healthy tissue, according to a press release.

Construction for the center, which will be Tennessee-based Provision Healthcare’s third proton therapy center, is estimated to begin in late 2017 with a target opening date somewhere around late 2018 or early 2019. 

The Hamlin Town Center project already has announced three other tenants: a 54,000-square-foot Publix, a 40,000-square-foot 10-screen Cinépolis luxury theater and a 189,000-square-foot Walmart Supercenter.

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Contact Gabby Baquero at [email protected].