Kona Community Hospital has begun planning for a new medical center that could cost as much as $200 million on 40 acres in an area known as Kaloko Makai.

The new facility would replace the 94-bed hospital in Kealakekua, about 15 miles away from Kona town, and possibly double in size to 200 beds, said Bruce Anderson, president and chief executive officer of the state public hospital system, Hawaii Health Systems Corp., parent company of the Kona hospital.

Honolulu developer Stanford Carr, who plans to build thousands of homes in the North Kona area, has offered HHSC 40 acres above Costco in Kailua-Kona to build a hospital.

A full-service hospital could be built within five to 10 years, Anderson said, though funding for the project has yet to be found. HHSC officials are planning a news conference for next week to announce their intention to build the facility.

The push for a new hospital comes as the population in the area rapidly expands and demand for medical care grows. Growth in the past few decades has shifted the urban core away from Kealakekua to North Kona near a new civic center and Kona Airport at Keahole.

"Everyone agrees the community needs a new hospital (closer to the center of town). The existing hospital is in the wrong place. It was built decades ago when coffee was king," Anderson said. "That area in South Kona was the area where most people lived."

Today, West Hawaii is one of the fastest-growing regions in the state, with most of the population in North Kona, said state Sen. Josh Green, also an emergency room doctor at Kohala Hospital.

"Now that the population is really booming up here, it makes sense," said Green, adding that there has been a 25 percent growth in the area since the 2000 U.S. census. "That’s a gigantic increase. After all these years of growth, we’re now catching up with the infrastructure. The logical next major piece will be a new hospital."

More important, a new hospital would be closer to Kona Airport — within five miles — in the case emergency patients need to be flown to Oahu. A new facility also could attract more physicians to the community, which has struggled for years to keep doctors, Green added.

The vacant lava rock site would need extensive infrastructure work, including sewer lines, Anderson said. HHSC would convert the existing hospital into a long-term care facility.

Alistair Bairos, a general surgeon and chairman of HHSC’s West Hawaii regional board, said, "Obviously, this issue is of great concern for the community. We’ve been looking for a replacement hospital since the late 1980s. It has gotten to be years later, and the population is much larger, so it’s become obvious to people that we need this. This is the furthest we’ve been along this road."

HHSC has begun planning meetings with North Hawaii Community Hospital, Kona’s business community and physicians. It also will seek $300,000 from the state next year to pay for initial planning.