Northside Hospital Forsyth’s Building 2000 opened earlier this year, and this week, members of Forsyth County’s business community had a chance to check it out.

On Thursday evening, the Cumming-Forsyth County Chamber of Commerce hosted a FoConnection event at the new building, which opened in March and is home to the hospital’s outpatient rehabilitation services, allowing chamber members to check out its offerings.

“We were hoping to be able to just get people an eye for some of the services that are available and what the building is kind of about,” said Lynn Jackson, administrator of Northside Forsyth.

Jackson said the new building totaled 135,000 square feet, which she said is “sort of noteworthy because the original hospital when we built it in 1999 ... was 100,000 square feet.”

“So when you think about how far we've come ... square footage-wise right now,” she said.

The new building offers programs for physical, occupational and speech therapy, stroke rehabilitation, therapy pool with an underwater treadmill, surgery center for out-patient hip and knee replacements and an imaging center.

“Most of it has been expansion of services,” Jackson said. “Upstairs, which we're not touring tonight, but we do have open several other floors, are medical offices. So several physicians were able to expand their offices, and then we've got some new medical groups to the campus as well.”

Jackson, who is also a member of the chamber’s board of directors, said the event was also a good chance to get input from the business community and allow them to interact with doctors.

“We feel like the business community, often times, doesn’t get an opportunity to really visit some of the businesses, especially the health care businesses, because the patient protection perspective,” she said. “We don't often want to mix company with our business, so this gives us a capability in this kind of building that is closed after hours to be able to bring the business community.”

In turn, James McCoy, president and CEO of the chamber, said the hospital had a huge impact on the local economy.  

“Northside is our largest private employer in the community,” McCoy said. “They are also the greatest corporate citizen in the community, and the service they provide to us is all class. This building is an opportunity for a chance to show it off to the business community, and obviously, the business community has shown up in force to see it and enjoy it.”