By Fay Harvey
SAN MARCOS, Calif. — San Marcos, located northeast of San Diego, will soon be home to a new Scripps medical campus following recent project approval by the Scripps Health Board of Trustees.
Led by Scripps, an integrated healthcare system based in San Diego, and the City of San Marcos, the $1.2 billion San Marcos Medical Center Campus project will be completed in two phases to bring state-of-the-art care to the community.
Phase I consists of developing an ambulatory care facility filled with multi-specialty offices as well as spaces for primary care physicians, ambulatory surgery, cancer care, complex imaging and laboratories. Phase II, planned with the assistance of the State of California, which oversees the state’s acute-hospital construction, includes building an acute-care facility to include up to 250 beds alongside an array of inpatient and outpatient services.
Over the past four years, Scripps has been developing master plans for the site and conducting necessary studies for project approval. Additionally, significant infrastructure improvements—including road development, grading and underground utility stubs—have already been completed.
Though the project was just recently approved, the project site was secured by Scripps more than three decades ago. In 1990, the healthcare company purchased 80 acres of land to eventually build the health campus. Ten years later, Scripps worked alongside San Diego-based real estate company H.G. Fenton and the City of San Marcos to begin planning, retaining 13 acres of the original property where the new campus will be built.
“We acquired the San Marcos property 35 years ago, but it wasn’t the right time to build,” said Chris Van Gorder, president and CEO of Scripps Health, in a statement. “Our patient population in the area has since grown to the point that it made sense for us to move forward. Scripps provides care to many residents of the San Marcos region today and this campus will expand access and make care more convenient for these patients and their families.”
“A major player like Scripps choosing to invest in San Marcos is exciting on so many levels,” said San Marcos Mayor Rebecca Jones in a statement. “We have worked hard to become a premier health care hub in the region, which not only supports a strong local economy but contributes to the ultimate goal of making San Marcos a place where people live long, healthy lives.”
