Mega-employer St. Luke’s Health System has been Idaho’s largest private employer for at least two years. It has hit a new peak, with exactly 10,297 people working for the system as of Thursday. Those included 370 doctors systemwide. About 7,500 people in the Treasure Valley work for St. Luke’s.

Crossing the state Based in Boise, St. Luke’s has spread across Southwest Idaho by buying physician practices and hospitals, such as St. Benedict’s hospital in Jerome, which became St. Luke’s Jerome last fall. St. Luke’s also has been in talks to buy Nampa-based Saltzer Medical Group.

Expansion plans Some St. Luke’s operations are slowly being moved into a strip mall at 111 S. Broadway Ave. — home, for now, to Boise Fry Co. and former home to Ali Baba restaurant. The system is essentially the landlord for the strip mall, said spokesman Ken Dey. It isn’t renewing leases as they expire. That’s because St. Luke’s plans to move nonmedical operations, like billing and human resources, into the spaces as it expands into blocks around its Boise campus.

Another Downtown tower The hospital eventually plans to build another hospital tower near its main building. That will “require a significant displacement” of offices that are in the proposed tower location, Dey said. “We’ll continue looking for space” in the surrounding Downtown area to lease and buy, he said.

Audrey Dutton: 377-6448