The Queen’s Health Systems has partnered with Castle & Cooke, Wahiawa Hospital Association and a joint venture of a consortium of development partners on a 16-acre medical campus planned for Castle & Cooke’s Koa Ridge project that will bring a variety of medical services to the Central Oahu community.
The medical campus is planned for 16 acres along Ka Uka Boulevard between the light-industrial lots that recently went on the market for sale and a 30-acre commercial center that will be across from Costco that will serve as the gateway to the 3,500-home master-planned community.
Wahiawa General Hospital had at one time planned to build a new acute-care hospital on the site, part of Castle & Cooke’s master plan for the 576-acre Koa Ridge, which broke ground in late 2017, nearly 20 years after it was first proposed and delivered its first homes late last year.
But Wahiawa General Hospital CEO Brian Cunningham told Pacific Business News that is no longer the plan — the medical facilities being contemplated will not be a replacement for his hospital, which is about seven miles away from the Koa Ridge site.
The actual format and services to be provided are currently being determined by the Koa Ridge Healthcare Group, which is “a joint venture of Wahiawa Hospital Association and a conglomerate of experts in architecture, engineering, master planning, design and construction to create and develop the health care campus of the Koa Ridge master development plan,” he said.
The partners include Honolulu architecture firm G70 and i-ON Group, which has brought on former Lt. Gov. James “Duke” Aiona as a consultant on the project, Cunningham said.
Koa Ridge Healthcare Group is also working with Castle & Cooke on the medical project, and the partnership with The Queen’s Health Systems was the first step toward getting the project going, he said.
“Now all the details will be worked out,” he said.
Queen’s started talks with the Wahiawa group about a year and a half ago, and the partnership was recently formed, Jason Chang, president of The Queen’s Medical Center, told PBN.
Queen’s will be the exclusive provider on the site once it’s built, he said. The location will help Hawaii’s largest health care provider to expand its services to the Central Oahu and North Shore communities. Queen’s last year acquired Haleiwa Family Health Center, which has offices in Haleiwa and Mililani, he said.
“We felt like this was an exciting opportunity to build a health care campus, one that can take care of all the future health care needs in that area,” Chang said, noting that Queen’s has been moving more health care functions from its hospitals into primary care facilities in communities around Oahu. “This is a great opportunity to go into that central corridor and take physicians service, diagnostic testing, and imaging to a community that does not have access to those services now, not in their neighborhoods.”
Chang said the exact services that will be provided on the new campus have not yet been determined, but he cited such practices as cardiology and diagnostic imaging as two specialties that would allow patients to “get the care they need close to home.”
“We’re going to spend the next six months putting together what belongs on that campus,” he said. “[We want to] build the medical campus that community will need over the next 10 to 20 years.”