A new surgical and diagnostics center proposed for a busy stretch of James Island could bring medical care closer to home for residents in the growing suburban community.

Officials at Roper St. Francis Healthcare are planning to build a $5 million facility at the site of Cross Creek Square, a shopping center on Folly Road near Maybank Highway that is set to be redeveloped.

The medical facility, scheduled to open in the summer of 2008, will help satisfy demand for health care services in an area that is expected to boom in coming years, Roper officials said.

"We see this as a real growth area," said Douglas Bowling, vice president of system development.

About 60 physicians see patients at offices within 1.5 miles of the site, a market statistic that helped Roper St. Francis pick the Cross Creek location, Bowling said.

Those physicians could send their patients to the facility for diagnostic testing and might even be able to perform surgery there, he said. They could also refer their patients to surgeons who work at the facility.

The 15,000-square-foot surgical center will have two operating rooms that could handle basic procedures in specialties such as podiatry and orthopedics. The diagnostic center, which will measure between 4,000 and 5,000 square feet, will offer basic testing services from scans to X-rays to lab work.

The center will mean a lot to the growing number of patients who live on James Island, Johns Island and Folly Beach, said Shanon Honney, a physician in private practice at Charleston Internal Medicine on Folly Road.

Many of her patients, especially the older ones, don't like to travel downtown for health care because of the traffic and extra travel time, she said.

"I don't know what it is about the islands, but people who live out here don't like to leave it," she said.

The state Department of Health and Environmental Control approved the project's certificate of need in October.

Officials expect the medical center to host about 2,000 surgical procedures in its first year.

The new center will occupy one of several new buildings expected to replace the Cross Creek shopping center.

Design plans show that the 500,000-square-foot area eventually will be redeveloped to combine residences, retail stores, offices and park space.

The property is one of 24 sites the city has designated as "gathering places" under new zoning rules, said Christopher Morgan, director of Charleston's planning division.

"They're a pedestrian-friendly, mixed-use center that has an urban village feel," Morgan said. "They're a real center of that portion of the city."

Reach Katy Stech at 937-5549 or kstech@postandcourier.com.