FREMONT — Washington Hospital and the UC San Francisco Medical Center are jointly eyeing a nearly 90,000 square-foot building in Fremont’s Warm Springs area as a future outpatient care center, and the concept received early support from the Fremont City Council Tuesday.

Without any discussion, the council approved rezoning the 5.2-acre industrial plot of land at 45388 Warm Springs Blvd. — which includes an 88,000 square-foot, two-story building previously used by Unigen Corporation for electronics manufacturing — to allow for outpatient care in the area.

Councilman Raj Salwan recused himself from the vote to avoid an appearance of bias, as he owns property nearby the building.

The site is in the city’s “Innovation District,” just east of the Warm Springs/South Fremont BART station, near where developers are putting up thousands of new homes, research and development campuses are planned, and where the city is constructing a pedestrian bridge to connect workers of nearby facilities, such as the Tesla factory, with the station.

“This is the first step in a multi-step process,” said Donald Pipkin, the head of strategic management at the Washington Hospital Healthcare System, which serves Fremont, Newark, and Union City.

The property has not been purchased by the hospital yet, and the plans are preliminary, he said in an interview Tuesday.

However, now that the joint proposal from Washington Hospital and UCSF has received the zoning approval it needs to expand into the area, the project can move forward, and the next step may include the purchase of the property and seeking required design and use permits from the city.

Gisela Hernandez, a spokeswoman for Washington Hospital, said over the past 60 years, the healthcare system has “grown with a purpose of serving the community” now and into the future.

“This project in Warm Springs would allow us to do that, if the project is seen to fruition,” she said. “With a growing population in the Warm Springs area…this project would enable us to serve the needs of residents in that part of town.”

Pipkin said the specifics of what kind of services will be offered in the center are “still very much in the planning phase,” but noted it will be based on the needs of residents nearby, and could include anything short of acute care, which is offered at the main hospital and emergency center in Central Fremont.

“We’ve looked at and identified certain services, such as adult primary care, family practice, OBGYN, pediatrics, potentially urgent care, specialties such as gastroenterology, and potentially an ambulatory surgery center, and a non-clinical pharmacy…so patients could get everything under one roof,” he said.

UCSF and Washington Hospital expect to create approximately 245 new jobs for doctors, administrators, staff, and building maintenance personnel, if the project were to be completed, city staff reports said.