$75M donation helps establish University of Utah health campus in West Valley City

The ground has not yet been broken on the 22 acres of land at 3750 South and 5600 West in West Valley City. But the property, which looks at the moment like a very large undeveloped field, is actually its own field of dreams.

It is the site of the soon-to-be 800,000-square-foot University of Utah Health campus, including a 90-bed hospital and multispeciality outpatient clinics in a project that will bring cutting-edge health care to close some of the community’s existing health disparities, while providing research, job opportunities, training, education and community engagement in a unique combination.

The health campus just took a $75 million leap closer to fruition thanks to the George S. and Dolores Doré Eccles Foundation. The gift “will enable the construction of the university’s first off-campus hospital in its 175-year history,” as well as its largest clinic, according to the university, which made the announcement at a news conference Tuesday.

The new hospital will anchor the $855 million project. The university is raising an additional $200 million, according to its president, Taylor Randall. He said the project is expected to greatly improve both health and economic outcomes in West Valley City and nearby west-side communities and potentially serve as a model for other parts of the state.

“We view this as an educational workforce and health care investment in that community all at once, and we hope that when we look back 10, 15, 20 years from now, we’ll see substantial changes in health outcomes and economic outcomes of the community,” Randall said.

He predicts this will be “one of the most exciting and transformative projects I’ll be a part of in my career.”

Spencer Fox Eccles, chairman and CEO of the foundation, called it a “landmark” gift, the largest in the foundation’s history.

West-side disparities

Per a news release on the campus, “This expansion is a vital step in increasing health care access across Salt Lake County, ensuring that the more than 725,000 residents living west of I-15 have greater access to hospital care, where currently only 1 in 10 hospital beds serve the area.”

University Health estimates patients from the west side have driven more than 12 million miles a year to be treated at its existing facilities.

Among the documented health disparities:

• West Valley residents have life expectancy close to 10 years lower than those who live in east-side communities
• They have close to twice the heart disease deaths, compared to those on the east side.
• The rate of diabetes on the west side is 44% higher than east of I-15.
• The west side also has a 38% greater stroke prevalence.

To bolster care for those and other disparities, the clinic will offer 200 specialties, including cardiovascular, general internal medicine, urgent care, orthopedics, pediatrics and women’s health.

Randall had been president of the university for about five days when he was asked to approve the plan to build a health campus in West Valley City, he told Deseret News. He said he responded that he needed a little time to consider it, then he enlisted University Neighborhood Partners to talk to West Valley stakeholders at multiple levels to see what their needs are. What they were told has driven the design of the campus.

“The community came back and said, ‘Look, we’re really interested in three or four things. One of them is certainly better health care outcomes, but the second is better workforce outcomes. The third is better educational outcomes. And finally, we want a place to build community and build on the networks that we have,‘” Randall said.

The George S. and Dolores Doré Eccles foundation has been involved in supporting health and wellness in Utah for about 60 years, said Lisa Eccles, the foundation’s president and chief operating officer. Hearing about the need and health challenges in West Valley City boosted interest in being involved, she told Deseret News.

“It’s hard to believe that about 10 miles away from downtown Salt Lake City is a community that hasn’t had access to great health care. They haven’t had the expertise of our incredible University of Utah doctors, the nurses that we have all enjoyed up here,” she said. “We just feel strongly that this is the right place to invest to make a meaningful difference in the lives of so many.”

Healing beyond the body

Randall said it became “readily apparent that the University of Utah had a really unique opportunity to partner with a community that has incredible strengths and assets.” Besides being Utah’s second-largest city, “it’s diverse, it’s hard-working, it’s incredibly resilient. They have dreams and aspirations, just like the rest of us. But when you look at the demographic outcomes or the economic outcomes and the health outcomes, you realize that there are some disparities this investment potentially could begin to address if we partnered in the right way.”

“When you start to view this investment from that lens, you begin to restructure what it means to be an educational institution, what it means to be a health care system.”

To that end, the project plans to see that a large percentage of the 2,000 jobs the campus will create go to those who live nearby, and to build pathways so they can achieve degrees. If all goes as planned, people could work in the hospital system while getting education that would improve their skills and income.

Dr. Bob Carter, new CEO of University of Utah Health, described the campus as “kind of like a Christmas present, where you really have this incredible opportunity, but it is a sizable project with significant scope, and so it’s a worthy challenge and an exciting one.”

The project is about more than building a hospital, “because there are some great hospitals all around the valley,” he said. Instead, it will create something new as it combines health care with opportunities of many different kinds.

“As I speak with many of our faculty and our leaders, everyone feels like there’s a sense of mission about this particular opportunity that I think is special,” Carter said.

He said he’d love to see high school juniors and seniors volunteer at the hospital and be inspired to work in health care and then get a medical education — admittedly a long effort — then come back to practice. “That would be, from an aspirational standpoint, an absolute, terrific win.”

Carter added that he’s deeply grateful to the foundation for giving the project a huge boost and to the community for engaging in a “very important partnership.”

Katie Eccles, a foundation advisory board member, said the novel approach of combining education and economic opportunities into the health care setting was particularly appealing — “that the residents of West Valley can work in the hospitals, they can be trained for skilled, higher paying jobs, and continue to work in that community, in that neighborhood. So it’s a really holistic approach with hospitals, clinics with 200 specialties, an ER right there in your neighborhood, so you don’t have to drive clear across the valley when minutes really matter.”

She added, “It’s not just bricks and mortar. We really hope that this will be a catalyst for economic prosperity, for opportunity, for job growth, for training and education and opening doors and opportunities in the heart of their community that haven’t been there before. That it can really be an anchor in that community.”

City officials didn’t just attend the announcement Tuesday; they’ve been actively involved in the planning of the facility since the campus was announced last year, Randall added, noting that hundreds at a time have attended various meetings.

West Valley City Mayor Karen Lang reiterated the community’s excitement. She said that her town has growing demand for a hospital and specialty services.

Construction will begin this summer and the clinic should be finished in 2028, with the hospital rooms following in 2029. Randall said there are also plans to create space for community gatherings on the campus.

Eccles' long history with health

Katie Eccles added that the foundation has a history of supporting Utah health care, especially through the University of Utah. This is a natural follow, she said, because “the bottleneck for having more skilled physicians is really residencies nationwide. This will open up additional avenues of training for our medical students, which will be a big help.”

She added that the Eccles family’s support for health care in Utah started more than half a century ago with money for the medical school’s library. Nearly half a century ago, George Eccles, this foundation’s founder, chaired the capital campaign to expand University Hospital. Much more recently, the foundation endowed the medical school at the university. Another family foundation, the Nora Eccles Treadwell Foundation, of which she is vice chair, has put many millions of dollars over the years into funding the Nora Eccles Harrison Cardiovascular Training and Research Institute at the school.

Health care is one of the foundation priorities, along with arts and culture, community, social services, education, preservation and conservation, Lisa Eccles said. And George Eccles had stipulated that all of his money should stay in Utah to benefit its people — the friends and neighbors who helped build up his companies so that he was successful.

“The goal is that the foundation will continue on in perpetuity and be there to address the needs and find solutions to our problems and challenges in Utah in every corner of the state,” she said.

Speaking of the many of dollars the Eccles family has donated to Utah causes, Gov. Spencer J. Cox said during the announcement, “I believe this one in particular could have the largest impact of anything they have done in the last century.” He added the gift has “the ability to transform generations, to save lives.”