Golisano's $40 Million Gift Names Wesley Chapel's New Children's Hospital

Johns Hopkins All Children's Hospital announced on September 12, 2026 that it has received a $40 million gift from philanthropist Tom Golisano, the largest single donation in the health system's 100-year history, and the money is going toward the pediatric hospital already under construction in Wesley Chapel. In recognition of the gift, the five-story, 56-bed facility near Interstate 75 and Overpass Road will carry a new name: Johns Hopkins All Children's Hospital, Golisano Children's Medical Center at Wesley Chapel.

For families across Wesley Chapel, Wiregrass and the Epperson corridor, the gift doesn't change what's being built so much as who's paying for it, and it signals the hospital now has real financial muscle behind finishing the job on time. The 112-acre campus is part of a project topping $300 million, and construction has been on budget and on schedule since it topped out with its final steel beam in May.

What's inside

The hospital, being built by Robins & Morton with HKS as architect, will house a 17-room emergency department, four operating rooms, four imaging rooms, an infusion center, a sleep laboratory and a gastroenterology procedures suite. Inpatient and outpatient rehabilitation services are also planned. The second floor alone will hold 25,000 square feet of outpatient care space spread across 36 rooms.

Exterior walls, windows and the roof are already in place. Crews are now working through drywall, electrical and plumbing inside. Johns Hopkins All Children's has started hiring staff for the new campus, with an opening still targeted for fall 2027.

Who is Tom Golisano

Golisano founded the payroll company Paychex and has spent decades funding children's hospitals nationwide through what's now called the Golisano Children's Alliance, a network that expanded to 21 member hospitals with this round of giving. The Wesley Chapel campus becomes part of that alliance, which the hospital says will shape how pediatric specialists are recruited and how care is coordinated once the building opens.

Hospital leadership framed the gift as a down payment on a broader fundraising push. Executives have said the goal is to fund a large share of the Wesley Chapel campus through philanthropy rather than debt or patient revenue alone, and that this donation is meant to accelerate the rest of that campaign.

That line captures the pitch behind the project: a full-service children's hospital, not a satellite clinic, landing in a part of Pasco County that has grown fast enough to need one. Wesley Chapel's population boom over the past decade, driven by neighborhoods like Meadow Pointe, Seven Oaks and Watergrass, has outpaced the pediatric specialty care available nearby, and families have often driven into Tampa or down to St. Petersburg for advanced treatment.

The Wesley Chapel campus is one piece of a larger expansion at Johns Hopkins All Children's, which is also adding a 28,000-square-foot emergency center and surgery suites in St. Petersburg and expanding urgent care in Tampa. But the Wesley Chapel hospital is the only ground-up children's hospital in that expansion, and the only one carrying Golisano's name.

The hospital has not announced a specific date for a public tour or ribbon-cutting ahead of the fall 2027 opening. Staff hiring is underway now, and more details on services and scheduling are expected as the building nears completion.

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