LEHI — IASIS Healthcare is investing in Utah County with a hospital complex planned for north Lehi.

Great Basin Engineering representative Coury Morris said his company hopes to break ground on the project in late March or early April.

“Just so you are aware, this will be a critical care facility and there will be a helipad. The drop off next to that helipad is adjacent to the ER entrance,” Morris said. Lehi planning commissioners unanimously approved the health care company’s concept plan on Thursday.

Located east of Interstate 15 and west of the Pheasant Pointe community, the medical campus will have a two-story hospital with 40 beds, an emergency department and four operating rooms.

“There is kind of a lot going on at this point in Lehi,” Morris said. “At total build-out there will be 80 beds; the first phase will be 40 beds. There are plans for a second medical center.”

IASIS Healthcare Corporation owns and operates hospitals in high growth urban and suburban markets and has nine acute care hospitals and one behavioral health hospital in the U.S., including in Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Louisiana, Nevada, Texas and Utah.

As a developer, IASIS is building the critical care hospital to serve Lehi and the surrounding communities and will focus on surgery and obstetrics. As a part of the facility there will be a three-story medical office building that contains for-lease spaces next to or attached to the hospital.

A second phase planned for the future would expand the hospital vertically two floors for a total build-out of four floors. In phase 2 there would potentially be another three-story office building on the other side of the hospital.

The initial facility will be about 184,000 square feet and a future expansion area of 74,000 square feet. There are 521 parking stalls proposed and another 250 stalls with the future hospital expansion. Total landscaped area of 61.4 percent meets and exceeds the 10 percent requirement of a commercial zone.

Parking areas are planned on all sides of the facility with a private road circling the site. Contingent on the development is the ability to access the large medical facility from two directional corridors. Plans realigning the East Frontage Road are still in process.

“I imagine it will happen soon but we haven’t seen anything on that yet,” Lehi engineer Brad Kenison said.

There is a proposed access to the future 2300 West/Triumph connector road at Traverse Mountain and an access onto the I-15 frontage road.

Morris said construction, once begun, should be completed within 16 months.

This is the first hospital complex planned in Lehi since 1925 when Dr. Frederick Worlton purchased the Lehi Commercial Bank building on 206 E. State St., moving his medical business from the upper floor of his home to the facility. In 1929, the hospital expanded to the first floor.

The Lehi hospital ceased operation in 1967. The building was condemned and demolished in 2009.

More on IASIS can be found at www.iasishealthcare.com.