ST. GEORGE — Intermountain Health, the parent of St. George Regional Hospital, announced Tuesday plans to build a medical campus within the Desert Color community about a mile east of the Southern Parkway exit of Interstate 15.
The campus, which will be considered an annex of St. George Regional Hospital, will initially have a 24/7 emergency room and patient care but no inpatient rooms. Known as Intermountain Desert Color Parkway Emergency Services, the facility will be similar to one under construction and opening this fall in Hurricane.
Brad Gillman, spokesman for Intermountain Health, said the health provider purchased the land back in 2019 in anticipation of the future needs of residents.
“This site has been part of our hub and spoke planning for many, many years,” Gillman said in a text to St. George News. “It’s time to build now.”
While SunRiver has been around since 1998 on the west side of I-15, the area to the east has been empty.
That is no longer the case with homes, townhomes and neighborhoods now occupied and more under construction. Businesses are also literally teeing off between the BigShots Golf entertainment center, the prominent Paparazzi headquarters atop the hill and a “world-class resort” on its way.
The facility will be located just to the east of the roundabout with Lagoon Parkway on Desert Color Parkway. Intermountain Health said the timetable for construction to being will be determined after facility plans are approved.
The Intermountain Health campus is actually the second medical facility announced in the Desert Color/SunRiver area in the last month.
In October, the St. George City Council approved zoning for a 17-acre, 24-bed hospital – Zion Regional Medical Center — to be built on land at the northeast corner of the I-15/Southern Parkway interchange.
QHR Health was to build and operate Zion Regional. It’s unclear the state of that project, but construction trucks were seen moving dirt at the site Tuesday. St. George News has not heard back on a request for comment from QHR on the current status of that project.
At 38 acres, the amount of land Intermountain owns is more than double the size of the campus planned for Zion Regional. And Mitch Cloward, who leads St. George Regional Hospital as president of Southwest Utah for Intermountain Health, said like the 28-acre emergency care facility in Hurricane, there will be plenty of room for future expansion at the Desert Color site.
“This site will accommodate both immediate and long-term healthcare needs,” Cloward said in a statement.
It also will shorten the trip for emergency health care for people living in the new Desert Color neighborhoods.
“We always wanted Utah’s finest health care provider located in Desert Color,” Ryan Coates, who leads marketing for the Desert Color development, said in an e-mail. “Intermountain Health is a significant asset to the Desert Color community and to our area neighbors. While they bring superb medical services, we are equally excited about the other tangible benefits that an Intermountain Health partnership brings: confidence, health and wellness, and a sense of safety and security.”
Further north, another new hospital for the St. George metropolitan area, announced in March 2021, appears to be in limbo. Steward Health Care said it would break ground on the hospital in Washington City in 2022, but that has yet to happen .
However, earlier this month, Steward sold all of its Utah hospitals and medical facilities to CommonSpirit Health after a previous attempt to sell the hospitals to MountainStar Healthcare collapsed. The press release announcing the sale mentioned that the plans included Steward’s five Utah hospitals, but made no mention of plans for Zion Regional or its future.
CommonSpiritHealth or Steward has not responded to a request for comment from St. George News. A Facebook page set up to provide updates on the progress of Washington City hospital’s construction has been taken down.
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