St. Luke’s University Health Network will officially kick off the start of construction of its $100 million hospital in Milford Township, near Quakertown, on Thursday with a groundbreaking ceremony.
St. Luke’s Bucks Campus will be a 131,000-square-foot hospital at Route 663 and Portzer Road and is expected to be completed in fall 2019.
The new 40-bed hospital will replace SLUHN’s aging hospital built on Park Avenue in Quakertown that was built in the 1930s and expanded over the decades.
The new hospital will be adjacent to the 261-acre Milford Village, a massive multi-use development planned for the area that includes apartments, homes, retail and The Village at LifeQuest, independent and assisted living facilities that are under construction and expected to open next spring.
The new hospital was designed by MKSD architects of South Whitehall Township and resembles other SLUHN hospitals the firm has designed. The new building will include private rooms, surgical, radiology and emergency departments, a laboratory, pharmacy and cafeteria.
Dennis Pfleiger, president of St. Luke’s Quakertown, said the hospital was designed with more functional, efficient space and systems. The building will allow for future expansion, including space for 40 more patient rooms.
The construction of a new hospital in Bucks County comes at a time of unprecedented growth and expansion for St. Luke’s in the Greater Lehigh Valley.
• SLUHN will double the size of its Anderson campus in Bethlehem Township. Construction began this spring on a four-story, $100M hospital that includes a maternity ward and emergency room.
• SLUHN will build and co-own with Geisinger, based in Danville, Montour County, a three-story, 120,000-square-foot acute care hospital with 80 beds near Orwigsburg, Schuylkill County. Construction is expected to begin this spring and be completed in late 2019.
• SLUHN acquired Sacred Heart HealthCare System based in Allentown in February and plans to provide a $20 million update to the former Sacred Heart Hospital in Allentown.
• SLUHN acquired Blue Mountain Health System based in Carbon County in December.
Competition among the major health networks in the region has intensified in recent years. Lehigh Valley Health Network, which has also been expanding, has been eyeing an 80-acre tract on West Pumping Station Road in Richland Township, just north of SLUHN’s project and Richland Crossings, and is seeking a zoning overlay in the township that would allow development of health care facilities.
