JUPITER MED CENTER SEEKS NICU, NEW ENTRANCE
JUPITER — The Jupiter Medical Center pitched a proposal Tuesday to the city’s Planning and Zoning Commission to add an intensive-care unit for infants and update its entrance.
The hospital wants to add a five-story building to the east side of the existing main entrance where the current pedestrian courtyard sits.
The 41,231-square-foot space would be used for 29 additional hospital beds and a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) wing on the third floor. A new driveway would be built off Old Dixie Highway to lead to the new main entrance.
In its presentation to the Planning and Zoning Commission, medical center officials wrote that the closest NICU to Jupiter is at St. Mary’s Medical Center in West Palm Beach.
“The NICU center will enable the JMC to provide more comprehensive medical care to families in Jupiter and surrounding communities,” the hospital said.
The proposed additions would be part of a $123 million expansion plan that also includes a new cancer institute and a stroke program.
“We want our patients not to have to leave our community to get the care they need,” Dale Hocking, Jupiter Medical’s vice president of finance and chief financial officer, told The Post in 2017 when the multimillion-dollar expansion plan was announced.
In February, the Town Council approved part of the expansion project — the Foshay Cancer Center, which is planned to be called the Anderson Family Cancer Institute.
The construction of the 55,000-square-foot cancer facility near Military Trail and Jupiter Lakes Boulevard should be completed by next summer.
Another project on the table for Jupiter Medical is an off-site parking lot for about 250 employees. This, too, was approved by the council in February and is expected to be completed in the fall, the hospital said.
These expansion plans are some of the biggest at the hospital, which opened in 1979. They come on the heels of the $12.4 million Margaret W. Niedland Breast Center and the $46 million Florence A. De George Pavilion, which is a three-story center with areas for surgery, recovery and rehabilitation, both of which were added in 2015.