WAILUKU » Developers have secured financing to build what would be the first new hospital on Maui in six decades and the first new hospital in the entire state since the mid-1990s.

An unidentified global real estate investment trust has committed to finance West Maui Hospital and Medical Center, Brian Hoyle, the president of Newport Hospital Corp., told The Maui News.

Newport plans to build the facility on 15 acres in Kaanapali. The desired property is currently zoned for agricultural use and would need to be rezoned, he said. Construction could begin in 2015 if all goes according to plan.

The hospital will have a 24-hour emergency room, operating room and 25 acute care beds. It will also have space for 40 nursing care beds.

No new hospital has been built on the island since Maui Memorial in 1952. North Hawaii Community Hospital in Waimea on the Big Island, constructed in 1995, was the last new hospital to be built in the state.

The lack of a hospital in the western part of Maui means residents and visitors must travel about 35 miles — or up to an hour or more in traffic — to get to Maui Memorial Medical Center.

Newport Hospital, which is based in Newport, R.I., won approval for the facility from the State Health Planning and Development Agency in 2009.

Two years earlier, the agency rejected a proposal by another group to build a hospital in Kihei. It said the proposed Malulani Health and Medical Center would have duplicated services already provided by Maui Memorial Medical Center, the island’s primary acute-care facility.