City finalizes land deal for new hospital

Maricopa City Council finalized the sale of less than an acre of city property this week, a crucial step toward building a new community hospital.

The council Tuesday night approved an amendment to the sale of just under an acre of city land at the southeast corner of West Bowlin Road and North John Wayne Parkway to Copper Sky Extended Care Group.

InMaricopa previously reported the sale price of about $290,800 for the 0.89 acres.

City Manager Rick Horst said the council’s action Tuesday night was the last in a series of required land purchase actions.

Another 1.29-acre plot, which includes an existing 8,151-square-foot building at the southeast corner of West Bowlin Road and Greythorn Drive that formerly served as the police department’s dispatch center, was sold to was Copper Sky Rehabilitation and Recovery Group LLC for $1.4 million.

The campus is proposed on about 60 acres overall.

The Copper Sky group purchased from the city another parcel of 3.53 acres at the southeast corner of Bowlin and Greythorn for $1.3 million.

Under its agreement with the city, Copper Sky must have its completed plans this spring to the city for both groundwork and actual construction.

“They have until March 31 to compete plans that they said are now 80% complete,” Horst said.

The land deal closes after the city receives construction plans, Horst said.

Construction is expected to begin this year on Phoenix-based S3 BioTech’s multimillion-dollar hospital and medical campus.

The construction budget for the medical campus is proposed to be upwards of $267 million, with an estimated completion date around June 2025. Hospital construction will cost $41.1 million and the medical office building $25.3 million.

Proposed is a specialty ER hospital of at least 100,000 square feet and 25 beds. The project would include medical service facilities: an ambulatory surgery center, a catheterization lab, and office space to house physician practices and medical services.

The hospital would be run by Houston-based Nutex Health, which currently operates micro-hospitals in Chandler and Tucson.

The company has 15 of its 24 hospitals in its home state of Texas, but has facilities in Arkansas, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, New Mexico and Oklahoma, with four more in various stages of development.

The company operates micro-hospitals, free-standing emergency rooms and community hospitals.

The city’s only existing hospital, Exceptional Community Hospital at John Wayne Parkway and Honeycutt Avenue, is part of a different Texas-based micro-hospital group.