Seminole County plans move from Sanford hospital offices to Lake Mary facility

Seminole County moved ahead with a $160 million plan to shift more than 500 employees out of the former Sanford Memorial Hospital and into a new administration building at the Five Points complex in Lake Mary, a change county leaders said was long overdue for both workers and residents.

The county’s current home at 1101 E. First Street in Sanford has served as the County Services Facility since July 22, 1984, after the county renovated the old hospital. The site’s history goes back to January 30, 1956, when Seminole Memorial Hospital opened there, and a historical marker says it remained a hospital until 1982. County staff have described the building as cramped and limited, with a layout that has been patched and adapted over decades to fit government functions it was never designed to hold.

The move is about more than relocating offices. County officials said the new facility is intended to bring records, permitting, administration and other public-facing services into a space built for county work, not a repurposed hospital. They also pointed to more than $1 million in HVAC repairs last year alone as a sign that the old building’s maintenance burden is growing. The county said a more modern setup should help staff work together more efficiently and could improve response times and customer service for residents who depend on county offices for day-to-day business.

Funding would come mostly from Seminole County’s 1-cent sales tax, which voters approved on November 5, 2024, for the Fourth Generation of the One Cent Infrastructure Sales Tax. County leaders have framed the project as part of a broader effort to match local government facilities with a fast-growing county and rising expectations for public access, parking and convenience.

The Five Points Operations Complex already concentrates several major county functions, including Animal Services, the State Attorney’s Office, Public Safety, the Seminole County Clerk of Courts and the Juvenile and Criminal Justice Centers. That concentration is part of the appeal: county officials have said the relocation would consolidate operations in one area and create a more permanent headquarters than the patchwork arrangement that has persisted in Sanford for years.

The idea of moving county headquarters has circulated since the 1990s, but it moved forward in earnest in 2021 with the courthouse annex project. Now the county is betting that leaving the aging Sanford site will solve an operational problem that has lingered for decades, rather than simply moving it to a newer, pricier address in Lake Mary.