The Medical Corridor Near Sun City Opened Everything Except the Hospital

"We're at about 80% developed residential uses in the town," Kevin Icard, Bluffton's Director of Growth Management, told WTOC in August. He also explained that town planners designed the Buckwalter Parkway corridor to hold higher-density development, "focusing heavily on medical services."

In 2026 that plan stopped being a zoning map and became buildings. Between March and July, four new facilities opened a short drive from Sun City Hilton Head. They added an emergency department, a cancer infusion clinic, orthopedics, vascular surgery and after-hours urgent care. They did not add an inpatient bed. The corridor opened from the outside in, starting with clinics and an ER, and its two hospitals come last. The timing of those last two pieces determines what the corridor can and cannot do for Sun City residents this winter.

The Order Things Opened In

Here is where each project stands as of October 12, 2026, based on the most recent dated sources available.

In the table, every clinic and the ER are already open, and both projects with operating rooms and nursing units are still on the way.

What the Emergency Room on Parkside Drive Is Built to Do

The newest piece is the one people will most likely visit without planning to. Novant opened the Novant Health Bluffton Emergency Department on July 21 at 8 Parkside Drive, just off Buckwalter Parkway, as the first phase of a campus called Washington Square Medical Park. In its opening announcement, Novant describes a 10,000-square-foot building with 10 treatment rooms, one of them a dedicated trauma room, plus onsite diagnostics and board-certified emergency physicians, open 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

The same release says what the building is designed for. It can stabilize and treat a wide range of conditions, and it will "coordinate transport to a hospital when additional specialized care is needed." A freestanding ER evaluates and treats patients, but it does not admit them. For now, a patient who needs a hospital stay is transferred off the corridor.

The ER is also only half of its own campus. Novant says the medical office building next door is still under construction, and Bluffton Today reported the same on July 25, with no opening date given.

Staying Connected, a resource organization serving Sun City, sent representatives to the ribbon-cutting. Its write-up calls the facility "just minutes from Sun City."

Infusion Chairs Arrived Before Hospital Beds

If the ER covers the unplanned visit, the MUSC Health Bluffton Medical Pavilion covers the recurring ones. It opened to patients on June 2 at 700 Buckwalter Towne Boulevard. It is a three-story, 54,000-square-foot building that MUSC says consolidates its existing Bluffton services and adds new specialties. According to MUSC's ribbon-cutting announcement, the pavilion houses:

• Adult and pediatric primary care
• A Hollings Cancer Center satellite clinic with oncology and infusion services
• Pediatric specialty care and after-hours urgent care
• Phlebotomy
• Pulmonary and sleep lab services
• Vascular care

The infusion service shows what the outside-in sequence produced. Cancer infusion is ongoing care that often means repeat visits, and as of June it is available on Buckwalter Towne Boulevard. Overnight hospital care is not available anywhere on the corridor yet.

Novant spread its outpatient pieces across the same stretch. Its Buckwalter Place Medical Park held its ribbon-cutting May 26, with primary care already open. It has an orthopedics and sports medicine clinic with 26 exam rooms, X-ray, casting and procedure rooms. In May, Novant said an imaging center offering X-ray, mammography, CT and MRI would open in July. By the July 21 ER announcement, Novant was describing Buckwalter Place as including an imaging center, though no published source gives the exact day it began scanning patients. Novant's location listing puts the imaging center at 400 Buckwalter Place Boulevard, Suite 1000.

The earliest of the four was Novant Health Heart & Vascular at 111 Persimmon Street, which began seeing patients March 9. Its focus is vascular surgery, covering aneurysms, carotid and peripheral artery disease, venous disorders and vascular access.

That makes two health systems with outpatient vascular care, two with primary care, an oncology satellite, and an imaging center within a few miles of one another. All of it opened within roughly four months.

The Beds Arrive in Two Waves

The inpatient half of the corridor is still on a construction schedule, in two stages.

1. Beaufort Memorial Bluffton Community Hospital, early 2027. It sits at 10 Innovation Drive, where the Bluffton and Buckwalter parkways meet. Beaufort Memorial's plan calls for 28 beds, a 24/7 emergency department, a surgery center, a cardiac catheterization lab, an inpatient acute nursing unit, and comprehensive imaging and diagnostics. At the December 2025 topping-off, the system projected construction would finish in late 2026 and first patients would arrive in early 2027. Its project page still reads "Opening 2027." The newest dated construction photos there, from June 11, 2026, show framing at the future emergency bays and work inside the lobby. No specific first-patient date has been announced.

2. Novant Health Bluffton Medical Center, potentially 2029. WTOC reported that this project cleared its final development plan meeting with the Town of Bluffton in August. It is planned as a full-service facility of more than 130,000 square feet, costing $320 million, on a currently wooded parcel near Lake Point Drive and Buckwalter Parkway. It would open with 50 beds and is engineered to grow to 100. Groundbreaking is expected in early 2027, and about two years of construction point to a possible 2029 opening.

Put together, these two schedules mark the corridor's limit. As of this fall, the ER at 8 Parkside Drive handles emergencies and transfers patients who need admission. Once Beaufort Memorial opens, Buckwalter Parkway will have its first inpatient unit with 28 beds. If Novant's schedule holds, another 50 beds follow about two years later. For the Bluffton side of the bridge, the step from zero to 28 inpatient beds is the bigger change.

Three Dates Not Yet on Any Calendar

Every facility above has a confirmed status, and three pieces are still open questions:

• The Washington Square medical office building at 8 Parkside Drive. Novant's April 2025 groundbreaking announcement listed primary care, cardiology, gastroenterology and multispecialty outpatient care for the building. As of July it was still under construction, with no opening date.
• Beaufort Memorial's first-patient day. "Early 2027" is the only public target.
• Novant's hospital groundbreaking. It is expected in early 2027, and the 2029 opening depends on that start.

There is also activity just over the county line. Bluffton Today reported in June that Novant plans a new operating room and emergency department renovations at Coastal Carolina Medical Center in Hardeeville, with no published schedule.

The Bluffton corridor also sits on the same side of town as the Thursday markets and fall festivals covered in our Old Town Bluffton weekend guide. In 2026, Buckwalter Parkway gained its own reasons for a regular drive.

At Kelly Ruhlin, we follow what gets built around Sun City as closely as what sells inside it, and the Buckwalter corridor will keep changing through 2029. If you'd like to talk through what these openings mean for your plans, or see where your home stands today, schedule a private consultation or request an instant home valuation.