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New Roper hospital could lure more business to East Cooper area
By DENNIS QUICK
Senior Staff Writer
When Roper St. Francis Healthcare officials on March 2 announced plans to build a full-service, 85-room hospital in East Cooper, the news was pure music to Myles Stempin’s ears.
“Businesses looking to relocate always consider health care,” Stempin, economic development coordinator for Mount Pleasant, explains, adding that the number of hospital beds in a community is an important relocation factor.
Roper’s proposed hospital strengthens Mount Pleasant’s health care community, which already features the 100-bed East Cooper Medical Center. Stempin considers the new hospital an economic development drawing card.
“It gives us more ways to attract new investment,” he explains.
Stempin hopes to attract a lot of new investment to Carolina Park, where Roper plans to build its $90 million, 250,000-square-foot hospital.
Located in northern Mount Pleasant off U.S. Highway 17, the 1,700-acre Carolina Park will be a mixed-use development of offices, business parks, retail shops, residential neighborhoods and schools, including the new Wando High School, where Roper St. Francis held its press conference announcing the new hospital plans.
Construction projects in Carolina Park could begin this year, as soon as deals with relocating businesses get inked, says Stempin.
Carolina Park will contain about 400 acres of offices and business parks to attract technology companies, research-and-development-companies, biotech firms and other knowledge-based industry.
“We want to get more companies like Automated Trading Desk and Benefitfocus.com,” says Stempin, referring respectively to the electronic stock-trading company and the health benefits software provider, both located in Mount Pleasant. “We want companies that provide prime, high-paying jobs.”
The new Roper hospital, plus East Cooper Medical Center’s planned 50-bed expansion, will help Mount Pleasant attract such businesses, Stempin believes.
Roper St. Francis officials see the East Cooper area as an opportunity to increase their market share. During the next five years, the area’s population is projected to grow by 19%, to more than 100,000. To take advantage of that growth, Roper St. Francis is transferring 85 unused beds from its downtown Charleston hospital to the new facility in Carolina Park. Offices and labs will occupy the space left by the beds transfer, says David Dunlap, Roper St. Francis Healthcare’s president and chief executive.
Nearly 70% of Charleston County’s hospital beds are located in downtown Charleston, where only 9% of the county’s population lives, says Dunlap. Meanwhile, the East Cooper area, with a population of about 85,000, has only 5% of the county’s hospital beds.
“It is vitally important that we as health care providers acknowledge and respond to population growth and shifts,” Dunlap emphasizes.
Roper St. Francis has applied to the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control for a certificate of need for approval to build the East Cooper-area hospital. In a best-case scenario, with a smooth approval process, groundbreaking for the hospital could begin next year and the hospital could be open in 2008.
Roper’s East Cooper hospital will employ about 300, including a medical staff of about 100, says Dunlap. The hospital’s services will include 24-hour emergency care, obstetrics and other women’s services, inpatient and outpatient surgery, intensive and critical care units, plus imaging and laboratory services, and a pharmacy.
In addition to attracting businesses to Mount Pleasant, Roper’s new hospital will help the town’s existing businesses, Stempin says. Local hotels will book more rooms because of out-of-towners visiting friends and relatives who are patients at the hospital, he notes.
Although the new Roper hospital will be competing with East Cooper Medical Center, Stempin sees both hospitals as an economic development plus.
“Having the best health care you can possibly have is an asset to the community,” says Stempin. “It’s all part of the quality of life, and the Lowcountry is at the top of the list in that department. That’s what draws people here.”
Dennis Quick covers health and wellness and economic development for the Business Journal. E-mail him at dquick@crbj.com.
At a Glance:
Roper St. Francis
Healthcare’s proposed
East Cooper hospital
Cost: $90 million
Beds: 85
Size: 250,000 square feet
Employees: 300
Services: Inpatient and
outpatient surgery, 24-hour emergency care, obstetrics, intensive and critical care,
lab services and a pharmacy.
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