After years of anticipation and abandoned plans, Maricopa’s second acute-care hospital is finally moving ahead, though its scale may leave the fast-growing city far below national benchmarks for hospital capacity.

Maricopa City Council this month approved rezoning of 9⅓ acres at Copper Sky Regional Park to make way for a community hospital and medical office complex by California-based BR Companies. The decision follows the city’s $3.2 million sale of the land to the developer earlier this year, which closed Sept. 30.

Years of false starts led to deal

The Copper Sky site has seen repeated failed hospital proposals, including S3 BioTech’s 2022 plan for a $762 million, 1.6-million-square-foot medical campus featuring state-of-the-art research facilities, a hotel with cabanas fronting the palm tree-lined pool and a seven-story luxury condominium tower. That agreement was terminated twice, in 2023 and 2024, after developers failed to meet construction and funding benchmarks.

The city council in April voted unanimously to sell the land to BR Copper Sky, a BR Companies affiliate, after tabling the item twice in earlier meetings. The Oct. 7 rezoning officially reclassified the property to allow single-story buildings limited to medical use.

The development agreement requires BR Companies to construct an acute-care hospital, not a micro-hospital, with 24 beds (four dedicated to ICU-level care), one operating room, a 10-bay emergency department and a helipad. It also mandates diagnostic and support services including CT, MRI, X-ray, laboratory, pharmacy and cath lab.

“It could be way above this, but this is absolutely what the city will be getting,” City Planner Derek Scheerer told the council last week, noting that the final size could grow depending on the chosen healthcare operator.

Under the contract, the company must begin hospital construction within 36 months of planned-area-development approval and start the medical-office building within 18 months. Councilmember AnnaMarie Knorr, who had pressed for stronger guarantees before approving the sale, said she was satisfied by the stipulations.

Lead developer Ryan Sullivan added BR Copper Sky remains under a nondisclosure agreement with a prospective Arizona-based operator.

Hospital capacity remains limited

Even with the new facility, Maricopa’s hospital capacity will remain well below national norms.

The U.S. averages 129 staffed beds per hospital, a figure that skews low because it includes many rural micro-hospitals, and 2⅓ beds per 1,000 residents, according to HospitalView.

Maricopa’s planned hospital will add 24 beds to the nine inpatient beds already operating at Exceptional Community Hospital, giving the city a total of 33 beds for a population of about 80,000. That equates to 0.4 beds per 1,000 residents, less than one-fifth of the national average.

For comparison, InMaricopa reported last week that New Dawn Behavioral Health is pursuing a four-phase expansion that would add 48 inpatient bedrooms at its Heritage District campus, double the inpatient bed count under the Copper Sky hospital plan.

According to the American Hospital Association:

• Small community hospitals typically range from 25 to 99 beds.

• Regional hospitals have 100 to 499 beds.

• Large hospitals have 500 beds or more.

The Health Resources and Services Administration defines reasonable geographic access to essential health services as living within a 30-minute drive of care, according to its federal planning standards. While light traffic on State Route 347 can let some residents in north Maricopa reach Valley hospitals in roughly 30 minutes, the same trip is unpredictable for many and out of reach for most who live farther south.

Next steps

BR Companies has until 2028 to break ground on the hospital. Once construction begins, it will mark the culmination of a yearslong push to bring a second acute-care community hospital inside city limits.

San Francisco-based Dignity Health, one of Arizona’s three major hospital systems, quietly acquired 18½ acres of land in 2012 at 44274 W. Smith-Enke Road along John Wayne Parkway, according to the Pinal County Assessor’s Office. That parcel, dubbed the “Maricopa Medical Campus,” remains vacant on the north end of the Main Strip.

“There’s a care gap in the city, and large hospitals like Dignity, Banner and Honor health should step up, break ground and fill the gaping gap,” said City Councilmember Vincent Manfredi.

Editor’s note: Vincent Manfredi is an owner of InMaricopa.