Intermountain Health and UNLV are approaching the end of a 180-day negotiating window to finalize lease details for a proposed freestanding children’s hospital in southwest Las Vegas on UNLV-owned land, officials told the Sun today.

Salt Lake-based Intermountain Health is planning a 200-bed facility at UNLV’s Harry Reid Research and Technology Park near the 215 Beltway and Sunset Road that would give Southern Nevada families much-needed specialized pediatric care that is noticeably missing from the region of nearly 2.3 million residents.

Intermountain and the UNLV Research Foundation are ironing out lease details as part of the “separate tract notice,” or letter of intent period, that expires at the end of March, said Brad Gillman, a spokesperson for Intermountain Health. The parties expect to sign the definitive agreements in the next several weeks, he said.

“We are in an expected holding pattern,” Gillman said. He added that “UNLV has been terrific to work with.”

It’s been full speed ahead for Intermountain since October when plans for the pediatric hospital were announced.

The firms Shepley Bulfinch and Gensler were picked in January as the project’s architects, a contractor is expected to be selected in the coming weeks, and Intermountain Health has been recruiting medical professionals, Gillman said.

Pending the lease being signed, a groundbreaking ceremony would be scheduled for late this year. The $1 billion hospital — with funding from private and philanthropic sources — would open in 2030, Gillman said.

There have been rumblings that University Medical Center is also investigating building a standalone children’s hospital. But a spokesperson for the hospital, which is operated by Clark County, told the Sun that UMC had no plans to establish its own standalone children’s hospital, and that it was focused on operating its existing pediatric unit adjacent to UMC’s main campus in the Las Vegas Medical District.

UNLV President Keith Whitfield in October said the children’s hospital was “another huge step in addressing the health care needs of this region.”

He added, “We need everyone working together to ensure that we have the health care resources to meet the needs of the region and our children who are walking by.”

The hospital will provide pediatric intensive care, newborn intensive care, cardiac intensive care, oncology, comprehensive behavioral health and more, officials said.

It would be a significant upgrade to the pediatric care infrastructure in Southern Nevada.

Sunrise Hospital & Medical Center and UMC each have facilities exclusively for children on their campuses.

But those can’t handle the demand, forcing 29,000 children in 2023 to leave Southern Nevada for neighboring states for pediatric care, according to a report from the Lincy Institute at UNLV. Payments to those out-of-state providers by Nevadans were $123 million, the report said.

“This does not include the immense toll families had to pay financially, and the mental stress, to get their children specialized care in those states — sometimes needing to be away from home for days and weeks,” said Mitch Cloward, president of Intermountain Health’s Desert Region. That region includes Nevada.

Applied Analysis, the local economic and policy firm, projects a children’s hospital will give the state an $800 million annual economic boost. It will create 1,334 jobs for health care providers and clinical professionals.

Nevada has 267 pediatricians to serve 640,000 children under the age of 18, “severely” limiting Nevadans’ access to pediatric care and “negatively affecting health outcomes,” the Lincy Institute said.

“Frankly, there are more important things a family should be doing than getting in a car and driving out of state for care,” Gillman said.

Gillman added Intermountain wanted residents to know help was on the way and the hospital was “going to happen.”

The Sun’s Grace Da Rocha contributed to this story.