This Chatham County resident looks around after foraging for some food in last week’s snow. The snow and ice that did fall last week stayed around on the roads until Thursday, with some rural roads still iced over until Friday. Luckily for this deer, she had her four legs to carry her around. And she didn’t get stuck traveling around like some folks.

It may be several years down the road, but Chatham Hospital leaders are planning to build a new hospital.

The process is a long one and, says Chatham Hospital CEO Woody Hathaway, the staff and the board of directors are only in the early stages.

But what the group is considering is a new hospital that would offer all the services now being offered in the current location.

The price tag for the project is still fuzzy at this point, Hathaway says, but he pegs the bill at somewhere between $17 and $25 million.

For now, though, hospital leaders are just beginning to look around.

"We’ve been studying what part of town we’d like to be in. We know we’d like to be in the eastern part of town," Hathaway said.

Laura Clapp, president of the Hospital’s Board of Trustees, said she hopes they can reach contractual agreements with several property owners within the next month or so.

But she says nothing is written in stone. "We’re still looking at several options," Clapp said.

Raymond Brewer, one of the members of the Board of Director’s Executive Committee, says a new facility has become a necessity.

When the former owner of the N.C. Sports Arena near Goldston closed his business early last fall, neighbors were happy to have a reprieve from the myriad problems, including loud noise that kept them awake into the early morning hours and illegal activity such as drugs and gunfire, they say the nightclub generated.

But the business re-opened under new ownership in December and, while neighbors say the new owner has worked hard to resolve some of the problems, loud music played late into the evening on Saturday nights continues to be a problem.

Several neighbors of the arena and the new arena owners met with the Chatham County Board of Commissioners and Sheriff Richard Webster on Monday to try to find a solution.