NORTH PORT – Sarasota Memorial Health Care System announced Tuesday that it plans to begin building its proposed hospital in North Port within three years, initially opening it with 100 beds and the capacity to more than double in size.
Sarasota Memorial Hospital-North Port will be built on 32 acres in the 4900 block of Sumter Boulevard, at the southeast portion of the Interstate 75 exit.
“Building a hospital in North Port has been part of our strategic plan and a longstanding goal of city and hospital leaders for many years,” Sarasota Memorial Health Care System President & CEO David Verinder said in a prepared statement. “As we had hoped, the new Venice hospital is expanding and bringing our extensive physician base further south, which provides the support and specialty services we need to move forward with a full-service hospital in North Port.”
Previously:Sarasota Memorial Hospital plans for new hospital in North Port
Verinder later added that if pre-construction and permitting work goes as anticipated, the foundation for the hospital could take shape by 2025, which also marks the 100th anniversary of Sarasota County’s public hospital.
SMH-North Port will be the health system’s third acute-care hospital – SMH-Venice opened in November 2021, joining the main campus in Sarasota – and first hospital in North Port.
Verinder was among a group of hospital officials who met with North Port Mayor Pete Emrich and North Port City Manager Jerome Fletcher Tuesday to discuss preliminary plans and a timeline.
“The want and need for a first-class medical facility in the North Port community is palpable, and has been for many years,” Fletcher said in the same statement. ”This meeting was just the beginning of the discussion, and the city looks forward to hearing more about how we can support the plans and the economic development opportunities a new hospital will bring to North Port.”
Sarasota County Hospital Board member Darryl Henry noted Monday that HCA-Florida Fawcett in Port Charlotte is “the closest efficient hospital” for city residents, but said “that’s not what we pay all our taxes for.”
He later said that HCA has done a nice job of renovating its hospital, adding, “They see us coming and want to be competitive.”
Henry said that he had talked with Verinder about seeing whether the hospital should consider whether North Port’s effort to start a series of infrastructure improvements could line up with the hospital’s plans.
He sees a North Port hospital eventually giving people in DeSoto County closer access to SMH facilities, too.
“I've got some good friends who live in Arcadia who would be served by it,” he added.
Sarasota County Public Hospital Board Chair Sharon Wetzler DePeters said SMH-North Port will be a historic milestone for the community and a source of pride for the hospital board. It is particularly meaningful for her and three other board members living in south county, Greg Carter, Henry, and Joseph DeVirgilio, Jr.
“As the governing board for this vital public institution, we are proud of the critical role Sarasota Memorial and its exceptional staff have played in this community for nearly a century,” DePeters said in a prepared statement. “After nine decades of caring for this community as a single hospital system, we now have a second hospital and soon will have a third to serve the growing south county region. It has taken years of careful forethought and planning, and will take considerable staffing and financial resources to achieve this milestone, but we have committed the resources to move forward immediately with the work needed to begin building SMH-North Port.”
Thanks largely to a growth boom since the Great Recession, North Port has become the largest municipality in Sarasota County and is one of the fastest growing cities in the country.
Sarasota Memorial, began in 1925 as a 32-bed facility is now an 895-bed regional medical center that is routinely recognized as one of the country’s safest hospitals.
The Venice campus, which opened in November 2021, reached full capacity within its first week, and expansion efforts will add 68 new private patient suites by early 2024.
Hospital officials have frequently pointed to the opening of the Venice campus as an important stepping stone to bring a qualified physician base farther south to help facilitate the staffing of the SMH-North Port campus.
The SMH-North Port campus is being designed as a hurricane-hardened facility and will include a back-up energy center. It will offer a comprehensive range of acute medical, surgical and specialty care, outpatient programs and diagnostic services, as well as space for educational and support programs.
A medical office building, which will include offices for primary and specialty physicians, including Sarasota Memorial’s growing First Physicians Group network, will also be built on site.
SMH is also in the process of planning to build an out-patient facility on a 27.8-acre site in Wellen Park, at the southwest corner of U.S. 41 and West Villages Parkway and revamp the facilities at its free-standing emergency room at Bobcat Village off of Toledo Blade Boulevard.
Former North Port city commissioner Fred Tower credited former SMH CEO Gwen McKenzie with bringing the free-standing ER to the city.
“She got that for us because they couldn't get us a hospital,” Tower said.
The property on Sumter Boulevard – which the hospital bought in 2007 – will need a lot of site work to make it a hospital campus.
That purchase came after North Port worked with Universal Health Services in 2003 and Naples-based Health Management Associates in 2004 to work through the state’s now abolished health facility approval process to bring a hospital to North Port.
HMA received approval for an 80-bed hospital in North Port but state regulators reversed that decision in 2006.
Former North Port City Commissioner Vanessa Carusone indicated she was skeptical about the commitment from SMH.
“Bottom line is the city was promised a hospital on the record back in 2008 or 2010 and that promise was never fulfilled,” she wrote in a text response. “The boy who cried wolf comes to mind.
“How many times until we just can’t believe you anymore?”
Carusone also pointed to the timing of the announcement, prior to the Aug. 23 primary in which four of the nine hospital board seats will be on the ballot.
“Isn’t it ironic that this announcement comes just weeks away from their election?” Carusone wrote.
SMH said it plans to create an SMH-North Port Neighborhood Advisory Council to gather input form nearby residents and businesses as the hospital plan develops.
Meanwhile all residents can keep up on developments at a hospital web page available at: https://www.smh.com/NorthPortUpdates.
Asked about the commitment from SMH to go forward with its North Port expansion, Tower replied: “I think what it is now is, North Port has a hospital, period.”
Earle Kimel primarily covers south Sarasota County for the Herald-Tribune and can be reached at earle.kimel@heraldtribune.com. Support local journalism with a digital subscription to the Herald-Tribune.