Officials with Baptist Memorial Hospital-North Mississippi are eager to move forward on their new $300 million hospital.

The project was first announced in 2009, but negotiations with the city of Oxford and Lafayette County have not moved as quickly as hospital officials had hoped.

Baptist officials want to buy out the 24 years remaining on its current lease. Then, they could move to a new location that will provide them with a 50- to 65-acre medical center campus.

City and county approval is needed on the buy-out.

Officials say the hospital is landlocked is landlocked in its current location and can’t buy any land around it.