Bon Secours St. Francis Medical Center opened in 2005 with 130 beds on a campus at Charter Colony Parkway and St. Francis Boulevard, built with the structure to grow. It has. A $108 million expansion completed in 2024 took it to 185 licensed beds. A second addition approved by the state in March 2026 will take it to 225. A three-story medical office building with an outpatient surgery center is under construction beside it.
For Midlothian, the hospital is one of the corridor's largest employers, with more than 1,000 people on staff, and the anchor of a medical cluster that keeps drawing offices, practices and the businesses that serve them. This post lays out what was built, what was approved, and what is still to come.
At a glance
Where: 13710 St. Francis Boulevard, Midlothian, at Charter Colony Parkway near Route 288.
Opened: September 2005, with 130 private rooms in a 245,000-square-foot hospital designed for vertical expansion to 200 beds, plus a 150,000-square-foot medical office building.
First expansion: approved by the state in December 2019; construction began December 2021; completed May 30, 2024. $108 million, 55 acute-care beds plus a 10-bed observation unit, about 110,000 square feet of new space and 70,000 renovated. 185 licensed beds.
Second expansion: approved by the State Health Commissioner March 13, 2026. $106 million, 40 acute-care beds in a 58,400-square-foot, two-story addition, completion targeted for September 2029. 225 licensed beds.
Medical office building: ground broken July 2025 at Charter Colony Parkway and Bon Secours Drive; 87,790 square feet on three floors with an ambulatory surgery center; completion expected late 2026.
Staff: more than 1,000, with about 100 positions planned with the first expansion.
Built to grow
St. Francis carried forward what its designers called the eight-decade mission of the former Stuart Circle Hospital in Richmond. The 2005 building cost about $51 million, the attached medical office building another $15 million, and the design left room above the existing towers for the two floors that would eventually go there.
The growth case was demographic from the start. When Bon Secours filed for state approval in early 2019, Chesterfield's population was approaching 365,000, up about 15 percent in a decade, and the hospital already employed more than 1,000 people. By the time the expansion opened, Bon Secours was describing the county as adding about 20 residents a day.
The first expansion, 2019 to 2024
Hospitals in Virginia cannot add beds without a Certificate of Public Need from the State Health Commissioner. Bon Secours filed in early 2019 for a project then estimated at $119 million and received approval on December 19, 2019: 55 acute-care beds, taking licensed capacity from 130 to 185.
December 13, 2021: construction kickoff ceremony. The project is now budgeted at $108 million, with Gresham Smith as architect and Skanska as general contractor.
February 2023: topping out of the two new floors above the existing tower.
May 30, 2024: Bon Secours announces completion. New intensive care, neonatal intensive care and mother-infant units, a new MRI suite and a pre-admission testing center are open; the medical-surgical and observation units follow by mid-June.
What the finished project added, by Bon Secours' own account: obstetric beds from 21 to 29; intensive care beds from 16 to 24; a neonatal unit rebuilt from 10 open bays into 11 private rooms and 3 bays; 24 new medical-surgical beds and 15 intermediate care beds; a 10-bed observation unit; and new outpatient and inpatient pharmacies. The hospital grew to about 463,000 square feet.
The demand behind it was measurable. Hospital president Joe Wilkins told Richmond BizSense in May 2024 that visits across Bon Secours' three Chesterfield-area emergency departments had risen from 2,242 in May 2022 to 6,342 in April 2024, and that 15 to 18 percent of those patients need a hospital bed. "There's an influx of people that are moving here," he said. "We want to make sure we have the correct services to take care of those people."
The second expansion, approved March 2026
Bon Secours went back to the state in 2025 for 36 more medical-surgical beds and 4 more intensive care beds, about $106 million for two additional floors on an existing tower. It arrived alongside two competing proposals for entirely new hospitals in Chesterfield, from HCA near Moseley and from VCU Health near the county government complex, and the three were reviewed together.
September 2, 2025: the State Health Commissioner approves the 4 intensive care beds but declines the 36 medical-surgical beds, citing a regional surplus of medical-surgical capacity. Bon Secours resubmits.
March 13, 2026: State Health Commissioner B. Cameron Webb approves all three projects: St. Francis' 40 beds ($106 million), HCA's 60-bed hospital at Hull Street and Otterdale roads ($260 million) and VCU Health's 66-bed hospital on Beach Road ($306 million). Together they add 166 beds and $672 million of investment to a county that, by the county's own figures, saw about 46 percent of its EMS patients transported to hospitals outside Chesterfield last fiscal year.
May 2026: Bon Secours appeals the approvals of the two competing hospitals in Chesterfield Circuit Court, arguing the county already has adequate capacity; HCA and VCU Health move to dismiss in June. As of June 2026 no challenge to the St. Francis approval itself had been reported.
The approved St. Francis addition is a 58,400-square-foot, two-story building, funded from reserves, with completion targeted for mid-September 2029. County Administrator Dr. Joe Casey, on the three approvals together: "People continue to be drawn here by our exceptional quality of life, which can only be enhanced by increasing access to high-quality health care."
The medical office building and surgery center
On July 9, 2025, Bon Secours broke ground on an 87,790-square-foot, three-story medical office building at the corner of Charter Colony Parkway and Bon Secours Drive. It will hold an ambulatory surgery center with two operating rooms and a procedure room, developed with Compass Surgical Partners, along with neurology, cardiology, general surgery and family medicine practices. Remedy Medical Properties and Kayne Anderson Real Estate are the developers, Kjellstrom & Lee the contractor and Timmons Group the civil engineer. Completion is expected in late 2026.
"This project reflects our ongoing commitment to expanding access to the right level of care close to home," Wilkins said at the groundbreaking.
What it means for the business community
Health care is the western corridor's steadiest growth industry, and St. Francis is its center of gravity. Three things follow for local businesses:
Medical office is the strongest commercial product on this end of Route 60. The St. Francis campus, OrthoVirginia's $50 million facility at Watkins Centre, and the practices that cluster near both keep filling space that retail no longer needs.
Hospital jobs are daytime customers. More than 1,000 people work on this campus, with more coming as the 2029 addition opens, and most of them eat, shop and run errands within a few miles of Charter Colony Parkway.
The competition is real, and it is arriving. HCA's hospital at Hull Street and Otterdale roads is scheduled for late 2029, on the far side of the same growth area that feeds St. Francis. A county with four hospitals instead of two will be recruiting nurses, technicians and support staff from the same labor pool every Midlothian employer draws on.
Read more
Bon Secours plans $108M two-story expansion at Midlothian hospital, Richmond BizSense, December 2021 · the May 2024 finishing-touches story
Bon Secours celebrates 55-bed expansion at St. Francis Medical Center, Chesterfield Economic Development
Virginia rejects Bon Secours St. Francis hospital expansion, Virginia Business, September 2025, on the first decision
Bed counts are licensed beds as reported by Bon Secours and the Virginia Department of Health; the 10-bed observation unit is not counted in the licensed total.
Last updated September 16, 2026.