Atlantic Health, a nonprofit health care network operating more than 550 sites across New Jersey, proposed a multi-phase redevelopment and expansion of Atlantic Health Morristown Medical Center, its flagship campus and one of the leading hospitals in the state. The program includes a future inpatient building, the West Pavilion expansion, the Goryeb expansion, interior renovations of vacated space, and a replacement parking garage, to be constructed in phases between 2026 and 2043. Because hospital operations are largely tax-exempt, and because the project advanced alongside a newly executed Community Service Contribution Agreement with the Town of Morristown, Atlantic Health required defensible estimates of what the expansion would mean for the local, county, and state economies and for the Town’s municipal budget over the full development period.
ESI estimated one-time impacts from capital investment and recurring annual impacts from expanded hospital operations using standard input-output modeling techniques, reporting results separately for the Town of Morristown, Morris County, and the State of New Jersey. ESI reviewed the project’s $1.59 billion capital budget line by line and excluded permit fees, administrative costs, and the portion of equipment and furnishing expenditures expected to leak to non-local suppliers, producing a modellable direct investment of $1.4 billion. Operational impacts were built from the ground up, converting 698,000 square feet of new hospital and clinical space and 1,400 net new parking spaces into an estimated direct employment footprint at stabilization.
For the fiscal analysis, ESI evaluated both sides of the Town’s ledger. On the revenue side, ESI modeled the payment schedule under the Community Service Contribution Agreement executed in June 2026, the licensed bed payment framework established by P.L. 2021, Chapter 17, and construction-period permit and fee revenues. On the cost side, ESI began with the Town’s $53.1 million operating budget, isolated the $29.8 million in categories plausibly affected by new commercial activity, apportioned that figure to the 31 percent commercial share of assessed value, inflated it to 2043 dollars, and scaled it by the six percent increase in the Town’s commercial building square footage the project represents.
The analysis gave Atlantic Health and the Town of Morristown a common understanding for evaluating an eighteen-year development program as it moved through local approvals, including passage of the General Development Plan for the Hospital Expansion Lot, site plan approval for the Pavilion, and the ordinance removing the deed restriction on the Hospital Expansion Lot. ESI found the expansion to be net fiscally positive for the Town in every year of the study period, with revenues exceeding municipal service costs, and documented the campus’ role as a regional economic anchor at three geographic scales.
