Larry and Heidi Canarelli Give $50 Million to Build Nevada’s First Standalone Children’s Hospital

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 7, 2026 — A Las Vegas family that has spent decades shaping the valley just made the biggest bet yet on its children’s future. Larry and Heidi Canarelli have committed $50 million to the Intermountain Healthcare Foundation to help build Nevada’s first comprehensive, standalone children’s hospital, the foundation announced Tuesday — the largest gift so far to Intermountain Health’s Nevada Campaign for Kids, and a jolt of momentum arriving just as the $1 billion project heads toward a groundbreaking expected later this month.

The giftFrom building homes to building hope

The Canarellis’ $50 million commitment, announced October 6, 2026, will help bring what Intermountain describes as a transformational place of healing — pairing advanced technology with specialized pediatric expertise — from plan to reality. In recognition of the gift, Intermountain Health will name the inpatient tower the Larry & Heidi Canarelli Inpatient Tower.

The gift fits a family legacy. For decades, the Canarelli family has helped shape Southern Nevada through leadership in homebuilding, education, and community development, according to the foundation’s announcement. The new commitment extends that legacy into the health of children and families, creating opportunities for future generations to grow up healthier and stronger in the community they call home.

“We’ve been fortunate to build in Nevada for a long time and watch generations of families put down roots here,” Larry and Heidi Canarelli said in the announcement. “Every child deserves access to great care close to home.” The couple added that they hope the gift helps keep more Nevada families together during some of life’s most difficult moments.

The towerWhat the Canarelli Tower will hold

Set to open in 2030, the Larry & Heidi Canarelli Inpatient Tower will include 180 inpatient beds, with room to expand to 228 as the valley grows. The planned services read like a list of everything Southern Nevada’s children currently travel for: a trauma center, an emergency department, the state’s highest-level neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), pediatric intensive care (PICU), a cancer center, behavioral health services, a child abuse treatment center, and advanced medical and surgical specialties.

That last detail — “standalone” — is the whole point. Pediatric wings inside adult hospitals do good work, but a freestanding children’s hospital is a different machine: pediatric subspecialists, child-sized equipment and dosing, emergency and intensive care designed around children rather than adapted from adult care, all under one roof. Nevada has never had one.

The campusThirty-three acres in the southwest valley

Intermountain expects to break ground later in October at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas Harry Reid Research and Technology Park in southwest Las Vegas, the same week UNLV celebrates homecoming on the main campus. The campus will span 33 acres and 828,000 square feet, and the overall project cost is projected at about $1 billion.

The fundraising machinery has been running for a year. Intermountain launched the Nevada Campaign for Kids in October 2025 to support the project — and the last two months have turned it from a campaign into a parade of landmark gifts.

The momentumRaiders, Helmsley, and a hospital parade

The Canarelli gift follows the Las Vegas Raiders’ $25 million commitment announced August 24, 2026. Raiders owners Mark Davis, Egon Durban, and Michael Meldman each contributed $5 million, with the team adding $10 million — the largest philanthropic commitment in franchise history. In recognition, the hospital will name its physical therapy and rehabilitation space, its bistro, and its inpatient rehab gym after the Raiders. The gift deepens an existing relationship: the Salt Lake City-based Intermountain Health has been the Raiders’ official healthcare partner since 2019.

Before that, the Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust committed $20 million in May 2026 to expand pediatric behavioral health services in Nevada — one of the largest philanthropic investments of its kind in the state’s history. Up north, Renown Health in Reno separately announced in September a standalone children’s hospital plan of its own, backed by a $40 million gift from philanthropist Tom Golisano.

The stakesWhy a freestanding children’s hospital changes everything

Here is the statistic that makes this story matter: Las Vegas is the largest U.S. metro area without a dedicated standalone children’s hospital, and roughly 2,000 Southern Nevada children are sent out of state each year for overnight medical treatment, per local reporting. That means ambulances to the airport, helicopter flights to Salt Lake City or Phoenix, and parents splitting time between a hospital room in another state and the rest of the family back home.

A freestanding hospital attacks that problem at the root. Keeping children in Nevada for the most complex care doesn’t just spare families the logistics — it lets Intermountain recruit and retain the pediatric subspecialists who currently have no full-service home in the state, and it gives the valley’s youngest patients child-sized everything: imaging equipment, surgical instruments, pharmacy dosing, even the beds. The 2030 opening will require four years of construction, but the effect compounds: once the subspecialists are here, they stay here.

For a town that has spent the last decade collecting pro sports teams and marquee developments, this is the other kind of milestone — the one measured in hospital rooms instead of headlines. And with shovels expected in the ground within weeks, the Nevada Campaign for Kids has its clearest signal yet that the valley’s first children’s hospital is no longer a plan. It’s a construction schedule. Catch up on the rest of today’s local news in our Vegas Daily.