George E. Norcross III, chair of the Cooper University Health Care board of trustees, spoke in early June as the system unveiled plans for a new multispecialty outpatient campus on 39 acres of undeveloped land adjacent to Route 42 in Gloucester Township. — Photo by Tim Larsen / Governor’s Office
By Joshua Burd
George E. Norcross III, the South Jersey business magnate and longtime board chair of Cooper University Health Care, is donating $100 million to the hospital system to support investments in its home city of Camden and its fast-growing service area in the region.
The transformative gift, which Cooper announced Tuesday morning, will honor the late George E. Norcross Jr. and Anne Carol Conner Norcross as the patriarch and matriarch of a family that has served the organization for more than 50 years. It also recognizes George E. Norcross III’s brothers — John, Donald and Philip — as well as his children, Alessandra “Lexie” Triem Norcross and Alexander Norcross, and Sandra T. Norcross.
As an acknowledgment of that legacy, the health system will add the Norcross name.
“For more than 50 years, our family has been dedicated to Cooper, and we are so proud to make this contribution to ensure that Cooper and the thousands of talented, committed professionals who make a difference every day for the people of Camden and South Jersey can continue the important work of investing in their future and in Camden’s continued renaissance,” said George E. Norcross III, executive chairman of Camden-based Conner Strong & Buckelew.
Dr. Anthony J. Mazzarelli, Cooper Health’s co-president and co-CEO, joined the board on Tuesday to announce what is the largest single philanthropic gift in its history and one of the largest ever made to a health system in New Jersey. The donation will support investments in Camden and South Jersey that prioritize education and community programs that create jobs, training and opportunity, the organization said, adding to the impact of a network that serves more than 2.54 million patients annually.
It comes at a moment of historic expansion for Cooper University Health Care, the largest and most comprehensive tertiary care academic health system in South Jersey after a series of strategic investments, partnerships and acquisitions over the past decade. That includes the addition of the MD Anderson Cancer Center at Cooper in 2013, the acquisition of Cape Regional Health System in 2024 and plans for a major shore region expansion with a multispecialty campus in Cape May and Atlantic counties modeled on the recently opened, 166,000-square-foot Cooper Moorestown Campus.
That growth will continue with the $3 billion expansion of its Camden campus — known as Project Imagine — marking the largest health care development project in New Jersey and Eastern Pennsylvania history. The project will include an expansion of MD Anderson Cancer Center at Cooper, three new patient towers with up to 745 all-private inpatient beds, a state-of-the-art emergency department, expanded surgical capacity, a new neonatal intensive care unit and services and modern education, research and command-center space.
George E. Norcross III, who has served a Cooper trustee since 1990 and is the longest-serving chairman and board officer in the institution’s history, has been a constant in those expansion efforts. But the family’s involvement with the system began more than a decade earlier, with George Norcross Jr. serving on the Cooper Hospital board of trustees from 1976 to 1983 and acting as “a quiet but forceful advocate for concentrating high-quality health care in Camden at a time when other hospitals were retreating to the suburbs.”
“He, along with former Governor James Florio, was among the earliest champions of establishing a medical school in southern New Jersey — a vision ultimately realized in 2012 with the opening of Cooper Medical School of Rowan University,” the system wrote in its announcement Tuesday. Anne Carol Conner Norcross, for her part, devoted years of her life to advocating for seniors and underserved Camden residents, working at the Camden County Senior Citizens Center while raising her four boys.
Philip A. Norcross, the longtime CEO of the influential Parker McCay PA, is chairman of the Cooper Foundation board of trustees and vice chairman of the Cooper University Health Care board of trustees, according to a news release. He also is a member of its executive committee, finance committee and treasury subcommittee.
Lexie Norcross, daughter of Sandra and George III, represents the third generation of the family’s commitment to Cooper, the system said. She serves on the Cooper Foundation board and as president of the Norcross Foundation, while she is the founder of PhillyVoice, a leading online news service covering the greater Philadelphia area.
