Rendering courtesy SMH

Sarasota Memorial Health Care System officials last week unrolled new animated renderings of a planned hospital in Venice by Interstate-75. The new images show how the 110-bed hospital show will look from ground level and what drivers passing by on the interstate will see.

The new hospital cleared all legal hurdles earlier this year and will move ahead on a 65-acre campus owned by SMH at Laurel and Pinebrook roads. David Verinder, CEO for hospital, said SMH purchased the land more than 12 years ago and held it until market conditions warranted an expansion.

“All of Sarasota County is growing, but South County is on a rapid pace,” Verinder told SRQ previously. “And Sarasota Memorial has a mandate to take care of the population for Sarasota County."

The full-service hospital will include a 28-room emergency service center and a medical office.

SMH spokeswoman Kim Savage says constriction will begin in mid-2019, with an anticipated opening in Fall 2021.

Florida's Agency for Health Care Administration in June gave final approval to a new Sarasota Memorial Hospital facility in Venice, the same day it issued an approval for a rebuild of Venice Regional Bayfront Health on East Venice Avenue. That came after years of legal battles between the Sarasota public hospital and other facilities in the region about whether a certificate of need for a South County SMH hospital should be issues.

At that point, SMH officials will bring the 350,000-square foot hospital online, and with it 90-acre care patient suited, 10 birthing suites, 20 private observation suites and at least six surgical suites, including one dedicated to obstetrician surgeries.

The hospital will also meet standards for a proposed hurricane shelter.

Officials at SMH stressed the design allows for the addition of 270 private suites and the eventual doubling of emergency room and surgical suites.

Rendering courtesy SMH