The Foxconn Technology Group campus under development has triggered its first growth-related project. On Thursday, Advocate Aurora Health announced its plans to construct a new hospital and medical office project in Mount Pleasant. Expected price tag is $250 million.
The health care company has been on an upward growth curve since the Advocate Health Care-Aurora Health Care merger in April. It has set its sights on expanding in the growing communities of southeast Wisconsin and northeast Illinois.
The Mount Pleasant hospital will be Advocate Aurora Health’s first move into Racine County. In February, however, pre-merger Aurora announced plans to build a surgery center and medical office building in Pleasant Prairie, which is expected to cost $130 million.
An Advocate Aurora Health executive told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that the new hospital will be smaller than Aurora-built hospitals of the past decade in Grafton and Summit. Several new clinics in the Racine area are also part of the planned expansion.
Aurora has approximately 60 physicians and an ambulatory surgery center in Racine. Patients needing a hospital are usually referred to Aurora’s Medical Center in Kenosha or the Aurora St. Luke’s Medical Center in Milwaukee.
An approximate 100-acre site at Interstate 94 and Highway 20 in Mount Pleasant will be the location of the hospital. It will be branded as an Aurora hospital. Construction will reportedly start this year and be completed in 2021.
The hospital announcement is the first large-scale project to be announced in direct response to the arrival of Foxconn Technology Group. It is not expected to be the last in the area the state has labeled Foxconn Valley.
“We look forward to serving this rapidly growing community by ensuring consumers have access to the right care at the right time in the right setting,” said Nick Turkal, president and CEO of Advocate Aurora Health in a company release.
“(We) are building for the future of how consumers want to experience health, whether it be in an ambulatory setting, hospital or from the palm of your hand,” he added.
The proposed hospital will include a full spectrum of emergency and inpatient services. Plans also call for two additional primary care clinics in addition to the new hospital’s medical office building that will offer a variety of primary and specialty physician services and online.