(Via City of Maricopa)
By Jay Taylor | InMaricopa
Maricopa moved closer to having its second hospital – and a lot more – after City Council’s approval of five measures that moved the project forward.
The multi-faceted project, being developed by S3 BioTech and Riggins Investment Properties, would include a hospital, medical office space, apartments, a hotel, entertainment, a sports-training campus, sports-medicine facility and an innovation campus.
The project is proposed for the northeastern corner of North White and Parker and West Farrell roads, near Copper Sky.
City planner Derek Scheerer said the measures cleaned up zoning and land use in the area to bring them in line with current city needs.
“The city wanted to…make this land available to be developed in a high-density urban fashion, with commercial at the corner and higher-density residential moving away from the high-density intersection,” Scheerer said. “We’ll move (from commercial) toward lower-density, single-family residential which you’ll find to the east of the site with Eagle Shadows and Sorrento developments.”
The approved measures are:
- General Plan future land-use map amendment for approximately 40.6 acres.
- Minor General Plan land-use amendment changing 40.6 acres to high-density residential from a combination of high-density residential, medium-density residential and employment.
- Zoning-map amendment for 19.4 acres to general commercial from general rural.
- Zoning-map amendment for 24.3 acres to multiple-unit residential from general rural.
- Zoning-map amendment for 16.3 acres to high-density residential from general rural.
The project would feature commercial on its west side, then transition to high-density residential in the center and lower density, multi-family residential on the east. The commercial component would include an office park with commercial complex, retail and mixed-use office and self-storage.
The high-density residential product is planned as a multi-story, garden-apartment community, according to Scheerer. The lower-density, multi-family area to the east would feature single- and two-story rental cottages that feature small backyards.
“I just wanted to bring out the significance of the fact that we are actually putting 20 acres of commercial into a product like this,” said City Manager Rick Horst. “Not only that, but we talk about how traffic patterns will change when commercial reach and products move further to the east of the city. The amount of square footage they have for office, flex and retail will be significant, and that will begin to change traffic patterns that we currently have going into other retail areas. We’ve talked about this in the past, but this is a great example of how it is now coming to fruition.”
The project covers 60 acres.
The campus would create as many as 11,500 construction jobs and 3,000 permanent medical-industry jobs, according to Ed Johnson, an S3 BioTech board member. The 30-year tax benefit of the project to the city is estimated at $4.5 billion.
The hospital and its affiliated services would sit on 9.4 acres at John Wayne Parkway and Bowlin Road and offer a broad range of facilities and services including:
- Full Emergency Department with 14 care stations and two trauma rooms.
- One Class 3 operating room.
- General-procedure room.
- Imagining department with MRI, CT machine and x-ray machines.
- 24/7 in-patient care with 14 standard-care beds and four intensive-care beds.
- Some units equipped with airborne-infection risk-control methods, and/or bariatric capacity.
- Internal med-prep pharmacy (non-retail).
- Large outdoor terrace adjacent to the family waiting room.
- Empty third floor for future expansion of services.
The hospital would rise 80 feet high, about seven stories, and include a helicopter pad.
It would connect to a proposed five-story medical-office building via an enclosed, third-floor skybridge. That building also would include leasable space for various outpatient medical practices.
The multi-use project includes a proposed 138-room hotel and a 136-unit, multi-family residential complex that would offer both luxury and market-rate apartments.
