THE SALE BY HARBIN CLINIC of its real-estate properties for $66,400,000 is interesting as a reminder of the strength (and success) of the local economy. It says even more regarding its foresight.

This is apparently the largest building/land sale ever in Floyd County if counting four separate clinic locations as one although there have been ones larger involving the actual associated business as well. For example, the Rome Coca-Cola bottling plant and business sold for $85 million back in 1987. Still, as the county’s chief appraiser pointed out, there are others around where just the physical holdings (not the business) are actually worth even more, probably topped by Georgia Power’s Plant Hammond which is on the books for $471 million.

A lot of folks apparently can’t separate the image of enterprise and location. One rarely has much to do with the other. Some may not grasp that a Harbin subsidiary (dealing only in real-estate) could sell buildings, lease them back and the clinic actually come out ahead in more ways than financially.

The explanation of Dr. Ken Davis, the president of Harbin Clinic, is worth repeating because it is what’s really important: “As we move forward with health-care reform and what may be about to happen, we needed to be as lean and mean as we could, and everybody said, let’s practice medicine and get out of the real-estate business.”

He didn’t even mention Harbin’s quite recent, and doubtless costly, addition of a super-high-speed records database.

With everything sure to happen in health care, with or without federal reforms, it bodes well for the community in which Harbin is based to see such preparation for the inevitable. And without actually losing, or seeing closed, a single square foot of real estate.