Phoenix-based Banner Health’s promised Tucson expansion is taking shape: The new owner of the area’s only academic medical center is preparing to build an 11-story tower and recently revealed plans for a massive north-side outpatient clinic.
Banner officials, in Tucson for nearly six months, have begun meeting with neighbors about expanding and reconstructing Banner-University Medical Center Tucson, 1501 N. Campbell Ave.
Neighbors can expect approximately three years of construction and facilities updates — the project, to cost at least $500 million, is due for completion in late 2018.
The hospital had been losing money under its former ownership, had fallen behind on capital improvements, and needs significant updates, Banner officials say.
Plans include a new entrance anchored by a hospital tower that will be nearly 700,000 square feet. Construction, which will include demolishing nine buildings on the north side of the campus, is to begin next year pending approval by the city of Tucson.
Banner officials say they are also planning a new $80 million outpatient clinic on Tucson’s north side.
The expansion anticipates a future when more health care will be done on an outpatient basis and only the sickest patients will be hospitalized.
With that in mind, outpatient surgery will be added to the north-side location, too, officials say.
“We are only adding seven or eight more beds to the hospital. The purpose is a better hospital, not a bigger one,” said Kathy Bollinger, president of Banner-University Medicine Division.
The company, looking to grow its market share in Tucson, is recruiting to fill 132 physician openings — about half replace doctors who have left, and about half are new positions, Bollinger said. Some will go to Banner-University Medical Center Phoenix, but the vast majority will be in Tucson.
The new doctors will come on board between now and next summer, and officials recently announced the first wave of 30 hires.
“This is a game changer for this organization,” Bollinger said. “It’s time to return to this organization’s former best self — and then some.”
She said Banner is also trying to re-establish relationships with physicians in the community and is putting a special focus on growth in obstetrics and children’s care.
Besides being the area’s only academic medical center, Banner-University Medical Center is Southern Arizona’s only top-level trauma center. It has 479 beds, and the new plans — expected to cost at least $500 million — call for expanding that to 489 beds with capabilities for another 96 if needed.
Neighbor worries
Neighbors’ concerns are mostly traffic-related as the hospital’s main entrance will shift from facing Campbell to an entrance accessed via Elm Street, directly across from the Blenman-Elm Neighborhood.
People will walk inside through a new north-side entryway rather than the current east-side one that faces Campbell. A new emergency-room entrance will move to the north side as well. Officials have promised the Jefferson Park Neighborhood a green buffer and pledged that they will never build north of the new proposed hospital entrance.
The main way into the hospital by car will be via an expanded road entrance on Elm Street at Campbell, which on the hospital side will grow from three lanes to five.
The Elm entrance will have three outbound lanes — one allowing a left turn; one for going either left or straight; and one for right turns. There will be two inbound lanes.
Two improvements are planned for North Campbell Avenue. The northbound left-turn lane on Campbell Avenue will increase to 200 feet in length to allow more space for cars turning left onto Elm, officials said. A 150-foot right-turn lane on southbound Campbell Avenue to allow vehicles to prepare to turn right into the campus will also be added.
“We are trying to create something that flows much better,” Banner health’s vice president of development and construction, Kip C. Edwards, said at a recent meeting with neighbors.
“We need to make it intuitive because people are tense when they go to the hospital.”
So far, neighbors have not voiced any major objections.
The primary concern of nearby residents in the Blenman-Elm Neighborhood, which includes the Arizona Inn, is excess traffic on Elm between Tucson Boulevard and North Campbell Avenue, Tucson City Councilman Steve Kozachik said.
That stretch of Elm could become a major access route for the hospital, which would be disruptive on such a narrow street, he said.
Discussions about traffic mitigation are ongoing. Kozachik, whose ward includes the neighborhoods around the hospital, said Banner officials so far have been cooperative.
New outpatient center
The 200,000-square-foot outpatient Banner Health Center, to open in 2017, will be on now-empty land next to the University of Arizona Cancer Center’s North Campus at 3838 N. Campbell Ave., near East Allen Road.
Building a new outpatient facility will let Banner centralize and consolidate some of its local outpatient clinics, including some currently in the main hospital.
An imaging center will also move from a location near River Road in the Trader Joe’s complex to the new outpatient center, Bollinger said.
Not-for-profit Banner Health became the state’s largest private employer on March 1 when it acquired the $1.2 billion, locally owned, nonprofit UA Health Network in a deal that officials called a merger. The UA Health Network was an umbrella that included two hospitals, three health insurance plans, numerous clinics and University Physicians Healthcare, which staffed the hospitals with doctors from the UA.
The UA Cancer Center in Phoenix is the only entity in the UA Health Network that was not acquired by Banner Health. It remains in a partnership with Dignity Health and will open a new $100 million outpatient clinic in downtown Phoenix this summer.
The two local hospitals acquired by Banner were Banner-University Medical Center Tucson and Banner University Medical Center South at 2800 E. Ajo Way. Banner assumed a lease with Pima County to take over operations of the south campus hospital.
The UA, which had previously owned and operated the university-area hospital (still known by many as University Medical Center), privatized it in 1984. However, the university still owned the hospital land and sold it to Banner for $60 million in a deal that included not only the hospital land but also a piece of property immediately west of the hospital, where the new hospital tower will be built.
When the land was owned by the UA, it did not need City Council approval for zoning changes. But now that it’s privately owned, Banner will have to go to the council before proceeding.
Officials hope to go to the City Council in late November or early December, and they say there will be more opportunity for citizen input before then. They plan to have another neighborhood meeting in September.
The deal left Tucson Medical Center as the city’s sole locally and independently owned community hospital.
TMC is trying to bolster its strength through partnerships with other hospitals, including the Mayo Clinic in Phoenix and four rural hospitals in Southern Arizona.
