Amid a tense legal standoff between two health care systems over a lease dispute, Golisano Children’s Health Center in North Naples is safe from an April 4 eviction. The location at the corner of Livingston and Pine Ridge roads serves thousands of Collier County families each year.

The legal wrangling, however, is likely to continue.

Miami-based Nicklaus Children’s Hospital System, holder of the master lease on the space at 3361 Pine Ridge Road that houses the clinic, threatened to evict Fort Myers-based Lee Health System Inc. prior to the end of its current lease that runs through September 2026.

Lee Health, operator of the clinic for more than eight years, filed a lawsuit March 24 against Nicklaus Children’s and the landlord, Pine Ridge Livingston LLC, in Collier County seeking an injunction to stop the eviction and allow Lee Health to exercise an option in the lease for two five-year extensions.

The Lee Health system includes Golisano Children’s Hospital in Lee County, a 300,000-square foot, seven-story facility that opened in 2017.

Lee Health’s lawsuit claims Nicklaus Children’s was attempting to end the lease for the Golisano Children’s Health Center in North Naples because of Lee Health’s conversion from a public to a private-nonprofit system last fall. Nicklaus Children’s officials said the health system informed Lee Health last fall that it was seeking to end the lease to utilize the space itself.

The complaint by Lee Health said the eviction would “…[jeopardize] the health of thousands of children who could be left without vital services — often life-saving services.”

Prior to a decision by the court, Nicklaus Children’s sent a letter to Lee Health President and CEO Dr. Larry Antonucci on March 28, stating it was withdrawing the notice of termination of the lease and asking Lee Health to confirm dismissal of its lawsuit.

“We are writing in the hopes that we may help to refocus the business relationship between Nicklaus Children’s and Golisano [Children’s Hospital] on what matters most — our shared vision to ensure the children of Collier County, Florida, receive the best care and services that may be provided,” Nicklaus Children’s Senior Vice President and General Counsel Jodi Laurence stated in the letter. “We are afraid that vision has been blurred by the legal exchanges, which culminated in the lawsuit recently filed by Golisano [Children’s Hospital] against Nicklaus Children’s without any warning.”

Laurence’s letter states Nicklaus Children’s had advised Lee Health in October 2024 that it would not agree to assignment of the lease.

“After almost six months of waiting for your transition plans and timeline, we had no choice but to start our own transition,” the letter states. “Even in the letter sent by our counsel on March 5, 2025, we stressed our goal was to ‘permit…a smooth transition to new premises.’

“At this time, we don’t want to revisit the history of our dispute and would prefer to focus on the future. We suggest putting the legal back-and-forth aside and remain focused on our collective vision.”

Nicklaus Children’s Hospital did not immediately respond to questions about whether the current Lee Health lease will remain in effect through September 2026 and if the lease would expire at that time so that Nicklaus Children’s can utilize the Pine Ridge Road space.

In a March 31 statement, Lee Health officials said is likely to remain active.

“Nicklaus Children’s action on [March 28] provided short-term reprieve, not a resolution,” the statement said. “Lee Health remains committed to collaborating on a long-term solution that honors Lee Health’s decade-long dedication to caring for the children of Collier County.

“The lawsuit is likely to remain active until these broader concerns are addressed. Outreach is occurring, and we look forward to discussing how to best deliver uninterrupted care for the children of Collier County.”

An initial March 29 statement from Lee Health officials said while the reprieve allows it to continue its mission in the short term, “we remain deeply concerned about the potential for future disruptions that could put our patients at risk. Lee Health has spent nearly a decade building and expanding access to high-quality pediatric services in this facility. With the help of generous donors, Lee Health has invested millions of dollars to create a space that meets the needs of our Collier County families.”

Lee Health officials said it is focused on ensuring a long-term solution that protects the continuity of care for patients and their families.

Golisano Children’s Health Center in Naples provides treatment in 20 pediatric specialties, including cardiology, oncology, neurology and pulmonology, as well as services for children with autism, rehabilitation therapies and an urgent care clinic that the system said served more than 20,000 pediatric patients in 2024. The clinic saw 65,000 visits overall in 2023.

Nicklaus Children’s was the original lease holder on the space when the two health systems started a collaboration in 2017. That arrangement ended in 2019, and Lee Health has since then paid the entire lease — currently just less than $115,000 per month — on the 29,600-square-foot space.

After filing the lawsuit in late March, Lee Health said it had paid the April 2025 rent into the registry of the court.

Nicklaus Children’s has another connection in Collier County through its collaboration with Naples Comprehensive Health since 2022 in providing inpatient services for the neonatal and pediatric intensive care units at the NCH North Naples Hospital campus.