POCONO TWP., Pa. – A developer's proposal to build a "neighborhood hospital" and three-story medical office building on the site of Hunter Pocono Peterbilt trucks was presented to the Pocono Township Planning Commission on Monday.
It would be just the second new hospital in Monroe County in 107 years.
Embree Development Group of Georgetown, Texas, submitted sketch plans for the project at 1328 Golden Slipper Road, just off Route 611. It would be bordered on another side by Interstate 80.
The plan would subdivide the Hunter Pocono Peterbilt site, now zoned commercial, into two lots: one for a one-story, 22,464-square-foot hospital, and the other for a three-story, 10,246-square-foot medical office.
Planners voted unanimously to accept the sketch plans for review.
No one from the developer side attended the meeting.
Township Manager Taylor Muñoz told planners that developers are "mum on who the actual tenant would be. They haven't disclosed it yet."
Both buildings would be surrounded by merging parking lots. Plans show the hospital with 59 parking spaces and the medical building with 148, for a combined 207 spaces. That's the number township zoning ordinances would require.
The campus would be surrounded and divided by shrubbery with light poles throughout the lot. There also would be a generator building and trash storage.
Entrance to the campus would be off Golden Slipper Road. Though the property nears Route 611, no entrance off it is shown.
Entrance to the hospital would be toward I-80. Plans also show the hospital with an emergency room entrance. The office building would have a separate, canopied entrance from the parking area.
The Pocono Peterbilt sales and repair operation has been at the site since 1978. It now has a 29,770-square-foot auto shop and large parking areas.
Online records show the site has been on the market since January 2021, but is under contract for sale.
Planners Secretary Michael Velardi said the truck dealership intends to move to Stroudsburg.
The new hospital would be just five miles from St. Luke's Hospital's Monroe campus — a 180,000-square-foot medical center that opened in October 2016, and an adjacent four-story 37,500-square-foot office building. The buildings had a total cost of $120 million.
St. Luke's was the first new hospital built in Monroe County in a century.
An $85 million, four-story, 170,000-square-foot hospital expansion broke ground this spring and is scheduled to open in early 2024.
Before St. Luke's Monroe, the last hospital to open in Monroe County was Pocono Medical Center in East Stroudsburg, which opened as General Hospital in 1915. It merged with Lehigh Valley Health Network on Jan. 1, 2016.
Two other local projects — St. Luke's Health Center Pocono Summit and St. Luke's Health Center Smithfield Gateway — are scheduled to open soon.
