Atrium Health Approves Plan to Build $450M Fort Mill Hospital Campus

The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Hospital Authority - the official organization of Atrium Health - greenlit a $450 million investment Wednesday to build a hospital campus in Fort Mill. Board commissioners voted yes without a single objection at this week's meeting.

The campus will house a 200,000-square-foot, four-story hospital with 60 beds. It gets four operating and procedure rooms. Fifteen emergency bays round out the setup. A 73,000-square-foot medical office building joins the mix.

Site work should begin in 2026, and the healthcare provider wants the campus up and running by mid-2029.

York County's population is on track to swell by 18% over the next five years — that's more than 56,000 new residents. Fort Mill itself grew 1.6% in the past year.

"To continue meeting the evolving and growing needs of our communities, we must grow alongside them," reads a statement the healthcare provider gave to The Herald Tuesday night.

The hospital will rise on property the healthcare provider already owns. The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Hospital Authority holds eight Fort Mill properties, according to York County land records. Six of these parcels combine for 34 acres southwest of the Walgreens at Tom Hall Street and Fort Mill Parkway.

Fort Mill now claims more than 36,000 residents. That tally doesn't count unincorporated areas like the Baxter neighborhood or the Carowinds corridor.

This new campus will shake up York County, where Piedmont Medical Center runs the only full-service hospitals. Tenet Healthcare opened Piedmont Medical Center - Fort Mill three years ago, creating York County's second hospital after years of legal battles between healthcare systems.

Encompass Health opened a 39-bed rehabilitation hospital last year on Vista Road. A 54-bed hospital from Medical University of South Carolina and a Piedmont Medical Center freestanding emergency room are under construction in Indian Land.

Many patients at the Pineville, North Carolina, location are South Carolina residents, according to the healthcare system. The provider bought Fort Mill EMS this spring and took over its ambulance service in York County.

Fort Mill Mayor Guynn Savage said on Tuesday, according to The Herald, that town officials haven't received formal plans yet. "With the growth that Fort Mill has experienced over several years and now the regional growth, certainly our population has reached a point where multiple medical facilities make sense," Savage said.