Major Medical Campus Planned For Douglas County At The Edge Of Denver-Metro Area

More than 40 acres at the edge of the Denver-metro area will be converted into a large medical campus serving one of the state’s largest health care systems.

CommonSpirit Health will develop a 42-acre property it has assembled in Douglas County’s unincorporated Meridian community to serve the “rapidly expanding communities” in Denver’s southern suburbs, the company said.

CommonSpirit paid $45.5 million for land that formerly encompassed business operations for TTEC Holdings, a global tech company that provides call centers and other digital services, according to TTEC’s third-quarter earnings filing.

“The building at 9197 South Peoria Street was used as TTEC’s principal place of business prior to transitioning its workforce to remote work in March 2020,” TTEC said.

Home construction company Shea Properties also sold a 19-acre property adjacent to the TTEC building to CommonSpirit for $16.5 million, according to local deeds dated Nov. 5. In all, the land purchases amount to a $62 million investment for CommonSpirit.

CommonSpirit said it expects to break ground on the campus in the third quarter of 2025, which will entail the demolition of the TTEC building beginning later that winter.

 “The campus will house innovative approaches to health care that create spaces for people to recreate, rejuvenate, refresh and improve their overall health,” said Andrew Gaasch, CommonSpirit Region president.

Gaasch did not offer further details about specific health care services that will be offered on the campus, facility sizes, target completion dates or how many patients the campus might see in coming years. He said the land purchase was the first of many decisions that have yet to be made about how the space will be used.

Gaasch said the forthcoming campus could amount to the most significant Colorado investment made by CommonSpirit for several years. He said the system chose the south suburban location because of rapid population growth in the area coupled with projections that over 65% of Douglas County’s population is expected to reach the age of 65 or older before 2030.

“Other factors that went into the land parcel decision were opportunities to partner with physician groups, a large population of CommonSpirit employees who live in the south metro area, and consumer demand for a mission-based medical provider,” Gaasch said. “When we invest in a campus like this, it’s really with a long-term vision of continuing to be a community partner for life.”

Peter Banko, former region president for CommonSpirit Health, said prior to leaving the health system in January that it was shopping for land in south Denver to build a “significant” consumer campus that would look like a health village or a retail center. He said at the time that he expected the campus to focus on cancer treatments and specialties in cardiology, neurology, neurosurgery and orthopedics.

After CommonSpirit and AdventHealth parted ways in the dissolution of Centura in early 2023, CommonSpirit was left with a smaller presence in the south metro area.

The system has 12 hospitals statewide, but CommonSpirit’s metro-area hospitals are concentrated in Lakewood, Westminster and Longmont. Conversely, four out of the five Colorado hospitals that remained under the AdventHealth brand are located in Douglas and Arapahoe counties and south Denver.

AdventHealth leaders early this year said they were looking at new locations in Castle Rock and Parker to house larger operations for primary and ambulatory services. They are planning for higher demand from the south metro area’s aging population for medical needs such as cardiac services, they said.

The CommonSpirit brand will soon have a more prominent placement in the southern suburbs, where construction is underway on the new Denver Broncos training facility and headquarters in Douglas County. Centura Health had acquired 10-year naming rights on the Broncos buildings in May 2023, which CommonSpirit is now branding with the name, Broncos Park Powered by CommonSpirit.

Source: MSN