CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Two North Carolina health systems said Wednesday they want to put 200 new hospital beds on Charlotte’s Mecklenburg County north and west edges, filing state paperwork for campuses meant to pull advanced care out of the crowded Uptown core.
Duke Health and CaroMont Health are asking regulators for permission to build one facility with 120 beds in University City and a second with 80 beds in the River District beside Charlotte Douglas International Airport. Officials tied the ask to the 2026 state medical facilities plan, which flags a need for 389 more beds countywide.
Peek and Zaas, the CaroMont and Duke University Health System chiefs, said a brand-new company they would own in equal shares would hold and jointly run both hospitals if the state says yes. Each system would keep its other hospitals and clinics separate. Zaas framed the move as bringing academic specialty care and clinical trials closer to Charlotte households; Peek pointed to CaroMont’s decades of regional relationships west of the city.
The larger University City site would sit in northeast Charlotte near Mallard Creek, where University City already grew up around UNC Charlotte along North Tryon Street and University City Boulevard. Atrium Health University City and Novant Health University already operate there, so a third large campus would add another option for patients who now travel toward central Charlotte for complex care.
The smaller River District campus would land on the western edge of Charlotte next to the airport. Together the partners say the two sites are designed so northern and western neighborhoods can reach specialty care without always driving into Uptown, where Atrium Health and Novant Health now dominate the advanced-care market.
State reviewers are expected to issue a state ruling near March 2027 on the Certificate of Need filings. If approval and construction hold to the outline the systems described, both hospitals might be ready sometime in 2031. Cost figures and full service menus for each campus have not been released.
