San Marcos Approves Scripps Hospital Complex

A 30-year development plan for a vast Scripps Memorial Hospital complex in San Marcos, including a 201-bed hospital to open in early 1996, has been approved by the city.

The completed 80-acre project would create 4,000 primary jobs and help fashion a San Marcos core area that includes the new California State University campus, a new City Hall and shopping centers.

The planned acute care hospital, which will join existing Scripps hospitals in La Jolla and Encinitas, eventually might be enlarged into a 450-bed facility and further recognizes the ever-growing North County market.

“The population base in San Marcos would certainly support the kind of approach we’re taking,” Michael Bardin, director of communications for Scripps Hospitals, said Wednesday.

He added, “we have a flexible plan. We’re not putting all the development in up front.”

During the first development phase, Scripps plans to open a medical office for physicians, imaging and laboratory facilities and perhaps an out-patient surgery center by late 1994 or early the next year.

The hospital is scheduled to open in 1996 and bring the estimated cost of the first phase to between $65 million and $70 million.

Over the course of the project, Scripps also envisions building additional medical offices, a 150-bed skilled nursing center for long-term care, a 100-bed mental health and chemical dependency facility, a research center and a possible wellness center.

The total medical complex would be 1.24 million square feet, but a cost estimate for the entire 30-year project isn’t available.

Meanwhile, Kaiser Permanente is pursuing plans to erect a 200-bed hospital in San Marcos around the turn of the century and located near the Scripps complex. Scripps is going south of Grand Avenue, west of Twin Oaks Valley Road, east of Bent Street and north of Barham Drive.

Bardin believes that Scripps and Kaiser “could probably do some cooperative measures as we develop our facilities independently.”

“If they needed beds for certain procedures, we could contract for those services,” he said.

San Marcos Mayor Lee Thibadeau, whose City Council gave the project land use and environmental approval Tuesday night, said Wednesday that the huge medical facility will be an economic boon to the community.

“With the university, Scripps, Kaiser, Palomar College and the kinds of industry they bring to the community, basically we’ll be inflation-proof in 20 years,” he said, predicting a solid economic foundation of jobs and services.

Besides the 4,000 primary jobs produced by the hospital, there will be another 3,800 non-staff support jobs such as maintenance workers, according to Bardin.

Thibadeau is also pleased because he hopes the medical center will coax the new state university to offer more job-oriented classes and de-emphasize liberal arts.

“Scripps offered us an opportunity to influence the direction the university (is taking),” Thibadeau said.

A few years ago, Scripps was pushing plans to build its complex in Carlsbad, but became frustrated at how long negotiations with the city were taking, according to Bardin.

Then San Marcos officials came along and enticed Scripps away.

“We went to Scripps and said, ‘If you’d chosen San Marcos, you’d be built by now,’ ” Thibadeau said.