HALFMOON — Residents who spoke Monday night during a public meeting on the proposed 120-bed hospital along Route 146 were mostly in favor of the project, though the developer remains mum on the question of who would operate the hospital.

No action was taken at the meeting, but Planning Board Chairman Stephen Watts said that the board is scheduled to consider whether to recommend to the Town Board a zoning change that would allow the project to move forward at its meeting later this month.

Kevin Dailey, the attorney representing developer Larry Boni, said that the proposed medical campus would provide a needed service to more than 100,000 people in southern Saratoga County and the surrounding area.

“We have concluded that 112,000 people are closer [to the proposed hospital] here than any other direction,” Dailey said. “When you consider our population as it exists today, and the fact that it’s growing, and the fact that we have a fairly affluent population, we’re at a tipping point where we can afford to have this kind of a facility.”

In a study directed by Stephen Berger, the Commission on Health Care Facilities in the 21st Century identified Saratoga County as needing new or expanded medical facilities.

Boni’s 82 acres of land sits on the south side of Route 146 in Halfmoon 1.3 miles east of Route 9.

The proposed hospital would be five floors and 225,000 square feet. Dailey estimated that the hospital could cost as much as $120 million to build. The site would employ several hundred people.

The plan also calls for a 160,000-square-foot biomedical research facility, as well as various other office buildings that could be used by doctors.

A main feature of the proposed hospital would be a 24-hour emergency room.

“First and foremost, I think that the town, as well as the developers, would like to see some type of a full-blown emergency room here,” Daily said. “That’s something we need. If you have a heart attack, a stroke, you’re in a car accident, you are really too far away from the nearest emergency room.”

Local fire officials who attended the meeting at Town Hall on Monday said they were concerned about their ability to reach the fifth floor of the building during an emergency.

“We’re not going to be able to reach the top of this thing, and I don’t think it’s fair to the public to buy another ladder truck to service it,” said John Cuttita, the chairman of the Clifton Park- Halfmoon Fire District No. 1 Board of Commissioners.

Dailey said that he has and will continue to work with fire officials as the project moves forward.

“We’re very happy to review any plans that we have with you,” Daily told Cuttita.

Clifton Park-based pediatrician Harry Miller said that he would be in favor of a new hospital that provided “great health care” to southern Saratoga County.

“My wife and I are both pediatricians, and we certainly welcome the opportunity to see how this works out for the community,” he said. “I think partnering with an academic center like [Albany Medical Center] would seem to be the thing from a health care provider’s perspective that would make sense.”

The developer has not announced a health system partner for the project, but Daily said that he has met with all of the local hospitals in the area and some hospitals outside the Capital Region.

He would not say which hospitals have expressed interest.

The project is at least several years away from breaking ground, Dailey said. In additional to local approval, the project will need to get a certificate of need from the state Department of Health. According to Dailey, the developer has yet to seek that approval.

Town Supervisor Mindy Wormuth said that the Town Board will likely consider the requested zoning change within the next month or two. If the Town Board approves the zoning change, the project would need to again go before the Planning Board for site plan review.

“Hopefully, the applicant will have heard this with a very open mind and come back with a plan that perhaps reflects the things they heard this evening,” Wormuth said. “I think it would be a great thing for the community, but the devil is always in the detail.”