What was proposed in 2021 as a sprawling hospital campus with a hotel, cabanas fronting the palm tree-lined pool and a seven-story luxury condominium tower could now end up being developed as nothing more than an office building and more apartments.
The city is expected to enter into a third contract to sell land near Copper Sky for a downsized medical complex, but not necessarily a hospital, this time with California real estate and construction group BR Red Copper Sky.
The contracts were moved from the consent agenda to the regular agenda for discussion on Friday, meaning city council members will engage in discussion and decide whether or not to approve the contracts.
Under the terms of the previous contract, the city would have sold the land to Phoenix hospital developer S3 Biotech. There were stipulations over the sale, including hard and swift deadlines. Permits were to be submitted by March 30, followed by construction beginning a month later and the medical campus opening by June 30 this year.
None of that happened.
The hospital deal died when the company violated the contract terms. Maricopa Chief Strategy Officer Rick Horst confirmed on April 3 the city terminated the agreement due to “the many unmet deliverables over the past few years.”
(It was the second time the deal fell through; in October 2023, Horst trespassed S3 Biotech employees from the property after they also violated that contract.)
The new contracts suggest some major changes to the original plans set back in 2021:
Rezoning the 9½ acres at the southeast corner of John Wayne Parkway and Bowlin Road to a planned area development to allow for more flexibility in design, including residential and nonresidential land uses.
The hospital could be totally off the table. The stipulation of a 100,000-plus-sqare-are-foot hospital complex with a surgery center has been replaced with a medical office building or a basic hospital with the same services as Exceptional Community Hospital — emphasis on the word “or.”
The medical office building would replace the hospital entirely. It would be constructed in a 40,000-square-foot phase followed by a second phase ranging from 20,000 to 40,000 square feet.
The hospital, if built, would still be A “two- or three-story building of approximately 60,000 square feet,” with no mention of bed space, surgery centers or labs. Originally proposed was a hospital up to 150,000 square feet. The hospital would be triple the size of Exceptional Community Hospital, but still much smaller than the average suburban hospital, which is 200,000 square feet, according to a Dec. 11 study of more than 5,800 American hospitals. Even “micro-hospitals” like S3 Biotech average about 90,000 square feet.
Meanwhile, mentions for the hotel and luxury condominium building were nixed entirely.
Instead, the contracts state the planned area development “may also allow for the buyer to develop a residential element at [the] buyer’s discretion.” No further details were provided about the residential areas.
The new contracts also give BR Red Copper Sky a little more leeway on deadlines, with rezoning to be completed by Aug. 1.
If the developer opts to build the medical office building instead of the hospital, construction must begin no later than 18 months after the rezoning. Construction on the hospital, on the other hand, would be required to begin within three years of the rezoning being approved.
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