Roper St. Francis Healthcare will build the replacement for its downtown Roper Hospital on a 27-acre site in North Charleston, part of a new medical campus the health system says will cost $1 billion.

Executives and local officials announced the site Wednesday. The parcel, near Interstates 26 and 526, includes the former North Charleston City Hall and is split by Mall Drive, The Post and Courier reported.

The hospital will go on the old City Hall site, and outpatient facilities will go across the street, next to the current City Hall, WCSC Live 5 News reported. The campus is expected to include a full-service hospital with a 24-hour emergency room and a medical office building offering outpatient and specialty care.

“I don’t think we could have picked a more central location that will be easier for our patients to access,” Roper St. Francis President and CEO Dr. Jeffrey DiLisi said, according to The Post and Courier. “We’re meeting our patients where they are by building this new medical campus.”

Leaving the peninsula

Roper Hospital has been in downtown Charleston for more than 150 years. When Roper’s first space opened in 1856 at Queen and Logan streets, that “was the center of Charleston,” DiLisi said. The geographic center of the region is now in North Charleston, he said. The new campus would be Roper Hospital’s fourth location, the newspaper reported.

The health system’s board voted in October 2021 to search for a replacement hospital site off the peninsula, and Roper quickly focused on the North Charleston area, DiLisi told the newspaper.

Roper announced the move in November 2021 as part of its 2030 strategic plan. A Roper spokesman said then that the new hospital would be “technologically and structurally upgraded to better withstand natural disasters, such as floods, hurricanes and earthquakes,” Live 5 reported.

The current hospital sits in a flood-prone area on Calhoun Street. If another devastating hurricane hits, “it’s going to be really hard for patients to be seen downtown,” DiLisi said, according to The Post and Courier.

“Every June to November, we sit there and wonder, ‘When’s the next hurricane going to come through and basically shut down operations for three or four days?’” Chief Medical Officer Dr. Robert Oliverio told Live 5. He said that should not be as big an issue at the new location.

Size, cost and timeline

The new hospital will have the same 332 beds as Roper’s current inpatient unit, with room to expand other services, DiLisi said, according to the newspaper. He said it is not yet clear how the $1 billion will be divided between the hospital and an unspecified number of outpatient and clinical buildings.

It will take 18 to 24 months of planning and design before Roper can break ground, DiLisi said. Construction will take up to five years, and Roper will keep providing care at its peninsula hospital until the new campus is finished, Live 5 reported.

DiLisi also pointed to the site’s access. “The facility will have access to rapid transit, so it’s going to make it easier for people that maybe don’t have easy transportation options as others to get to our new Roper campus,” he told Live 5.

North Charleston City Council gave first-reading approval Tuesday to the sale of the last part of the property for $9.2 million, with final approval expected Nov. 22, The Post and Courier reported.

State approval still needed

Before it can build, Roper must obtain a certificate of need from the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control, and competitors can challenge its application, the newspaper reported. A provision that would have let a health care facility move within the same county without a new license passed the state House in the budget but did not make it into the final budget.

DiLisi said the project is “a replacement hospital, so we are hopeful that our competitors will be supportive of this.”

‘The center of transit’

Local officials welcomed the decision. Charleston County Council Chairman Teddie Pryor called the site “the center of transit.” “This is the hub that makes things turn,” he said, according to the newspaper.

North Charleston Mayor Keith Summey called the corridor “the center point of our universe called the Lowcountry.”

Architect Jeremy Bartz, a partner in E4H Environments for Health Architecture, which is helping design the campus, said it could be “one of the most significant projects across the East Coast.” “It will not only be a hospital, it will be a central hub of the community,” he said.

What happens downtown

Roper will continue to “have a presence on the peninsula,” DiLisi said, though he did not give specifics, The Post and Courier reported.

The Medical University of South Carolina, whose buildings surround the current Roper Hospital, is interested in the property, MUSC spokeswoman Heather Woolwine told the newspaper. “We would need to perform due diligence and receive board approval to move forward with any sort of acquisition of the facility,” she said.