Early last month, Novant Health quietly broke ground – a second time – on Novant Health Mint Hill Medical Center, which will be built on Albemarle Road near the I-485 interchange.

The hospital will be near Mint Hill town limits, but is in Charlotte’s zoning jurisdiction.

The first groundbreaking was held in 2008, but a faltering economy caused the hospital to put those plans on hold. Now, they say, they are ready to build.

“We’ve been talking about it for a long time, and it’s finally happening,” said Novant Health Mint Hill Medical Center president and chief operation officer Joy Greear.

“I am very excited. It’s been so encouraging to be out in the Mint Hill community and see the excitement in the town now that the hospital is finally underway.”

Infrastructure on the 80-acre site, including streets, utilities, storm and sewer drains and detention ponds, are being built.

Construction on the first medical office building should begin in January. That 15,000-square-foot building will front Albemarle Road and will contain a pediatric practice, a family practice, an OB/GYN practice and a sports medicine practice. Plans also call for other specialists, but those practices haven’t firmly committed. That building should open next summer.

Construction on the 100,000-square-foot hospital and accompanying 80,000-square-foot medical office should start early next summer and open in June of 2018.

When complete, the hospital will offer 24 acute beds, four intensive care unit beds, eight labor and delivery rooms, 10 observation beds, four operating rooms and a 16-bay emergency department.

When fully staffed, Greear said the new $90 million project will create about 400 jobs.