The outside of the John Peter Smith Hospital Campus in Fort Worth on Thursday, Aug. 17, 2023.
Christopher Torres
ctorres@star-telegram.com
The next central piece of the JPS Health Network expansion program will soon be underway as more details have emerged on a key project, records show.
Filings from a Denton-based engineering and architecture firm show that more detailed plans for a central utility plant have been presented to the city’s Urban Design Commission. The central utility plant will be at 1500 S. Main St., across from a high-rise medical outpatient building, new parking garges, and eventually, a new high-rise inpatient hospital.
The outpatient building and central utility plant will be completed in 2029. The new hospital, which new records now show will be 14 stories high, is projected to open in 2030, according to JPS’ master plan.
Records filed to the city this week describe the upcoming central utility plant as a three-story building that will be adjacent to the eventual 14-story hospital.
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The filings described the central utility plant as a building that will provide reliable energy and utilites to power all new facilities across the JPS campus.
The filings also show a drop-off drive to the complex will be built off South Main Street and a discharge drive will be provided off East Morphy Street. Parking lots, in addition to a new parking garage, will be built off of Morphy Street and a looped drive will be built with entrances off Main Street from St. Joseph Court and Morphy Street. Part of the looped drive will have access to the central utility plant, parking garage, new staff and police parking lot, ambulance drive and a service yard, the filings show.
The plant is part of JPS’ broader expansion plan covered by an $800 million bond approved by Tarrant County voters in 2018 for what was originally estimated to be a $1.5 billion project for the public hospital system.
The cost of the project is now at $2.5 billion. JPS approved its 2026 budget in August 2025, which predicted that JPS will grow its cash savings to pay for the projects.
JPS first filed a grading permit with the city for the central utility plant in December, and filed a separate permit for the high-rise outpatient building in January. The outpatient building, according to filings, wil be a free-standing building adjacent to and connected, via elevated pedestrian walkways, to an existing seven-story parking garage. A new parking garage will also be built.
The outpatient building will include clinics and an ambulatory surgery center. A service dock will be at the first level and will be acessible by a service drive between the new outpatient building and parking garage. An emergency generator will also be south of the existing parking garage, the new filings show.
JPS Master Plan details
JPS’ 10-year expansion plan includes the hospital, a medical home, the parking garage, central utility plant, medical office building, service building, warehouse, laundry building, behaviroal health tower and the medical outpatient tower.
The parking garage is expected to be open this spring, while most other projects will open starting in 2029. In September, JPS opened a Psychiatric Emergency Center, the first building of the master plan.
Fort Worth Star-Telegram
Samuel O’Neal is a local news reporter at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram covering higher education and local news in Fort Worth. He joined the team in December 2025 after previously working as a staff writer at the Philadelphia Inquirer. He graduated from Temple University, where he served as the Editor-in-Chief of the school’s student paper, The Temple News.