Fourth hospital plan emerges in WL, as Parkview Health aims at Purdue Research Park
Fort Wayne-based system looks to build $200M hospital in Purdue Research Park, near the $3.87B SK hynix semiconductor site. The hospital plans are the fourth in the works for West Lafayette.
After years of scrambling to attract a hospital in West Lafayette, a flurry of plans continued to roll out Thursday when Parkview Health announced it intention to build a facility with an emergency room and up to 40 in-patient beds in the Purdue Research Park, just west of the $3.87 billion SK hynix semiconductor facility.
The hospital – the third of some kind announced for the West Side in 2025 and the fourth in the works in the city – would open in 2028 along Endeavor Drive, west of Yeager Road, according to Purdue Research Foundation and Parkview Health officials. Construction is expected to start in 2026, according to Thursday’s release.
That would coincide with the scheduled 2028 opening of SK hynix, which is expected to have a 340,000-square-foot R&D and manufacturing facility that would eventually employ 800 to 1,000 people north of Kalberer Road, between Yeager Road and County Road 50 West.
It also coincides with hospitals of some sort in the works in West Lafayette from IU Health, Franciscan Health and Ascension-St. Vincent – three of those announced in the past few months.
The hospital, expected to cost $200 million, would include a 24-hour emergency department, in-patient facilities along with surgical and procedural services, specialty care, lab and imaging and outpatient care, according to Parkview Health’s release Thursday. The Fort Wayne-based nonprofit health care system said some specialty and primary care services were expected to open in West Lafayette before the hospital.
Specifics about what those specialties were and how they would complement or compete with other existing or planned services on the West Side weren’t immediately available Thursday morning.
Parkview Health’s hospital also would include room for expansion, pinning that to growth in Tippecanoe County, including the pending arrival of SK hynix.
The West Lafayette site would be the first in Tippecanoe County for Parkview Health, which has 15 hospitals and a series of primary and specialty care facilities primarily in northeast Indiana and Ohio.
“We are grateful for partners like PRF, Purdue University and the city of West Lafayette for working with us over the last several years to make this hospital a reality,” Dr. Greg Johnson, chief physician executive of growth markets with Parkview Health, said in a release Thursday. “These community leaders shared our vision to meet the growing needs of Tippecanoe County, and we couldn’t be more excited to bring Parkview’s high-quality care to another Indiana community.”
Former Purdue President Mitch Daniels, chair of the PRF Board of Directors, was instrumental in 2022 in recruiting Indianapolis-based Ascension-St. Vincent to build what then was called a neighborhood hospital on PRF land in the Purdue Discovery Park District, near the western edge of campus. (Full-scale construction of that hospital still hasn’t started.)
Requests to consider hospital service in West Lafayette have noted that it’s a 20-minute drive from most parts of the city to Lafayette’s two hospitals, IU Health Arnett and Franciscan Health East, situated on the east side of Lafayette.
“The need for medical care close to campus has been a long-time goal for the university,” Daniels said in a PRF release Thursday. “Parkview is an ideal provider to bring an emergency room and additional medical services to our fast-growing university environment.”
The notion that a medical facility of some sort would go up near SK hynix’s site was something officials from the South Korean company brought up often during interviews and public forums ahead of a vote in May on a controversial rezoning request that cleared the way for its preferred site in the Purdue Research Park. (That rezoning vote now is being contested in lawsuits filed by residents who live near the West Lafayette site.)
“I don’t think it was inevitable,” West Lafayette Mayor Erin Easter said Thursday about the location announced by Parkview Health. “There have been conversations about a hospital in West Lafayette for many years, almost decades at this point. What I do think was inevitable was that with community growth healthcare would follow.”
With the string of hospital announcements, had a long-standing absence suddenly become a glut in West Lafayette? Easter said the city was ready for it, with coordination by the health care organizations.
“First, this requires careful planning of any property, regardless of the institution and location,” Easter said. “Access to our citizens and our immediate neighbors, and further afield neighbors will be critical. Second, I believe there will be, at the hospital level, a coordination of services so we have a variety of specialties and services in West Lafayette, not a duplication of services. Finally, citizens deserve high quality healthcare service. We have several incredible institutions that have signaled their commitment to West Lafayette, and success will be measured by the quality of the patient experience.”
Angel Valentin is trustee of Wabash Township, which provides fire and ambulance coverage of fast-growing unincorporated areas just west and north of West Lafayette.
“We are incredibly excited,” Valentin said Thursday. “The announced location will allow our fire department and other ambulance services to provide faster transports to definitive care, which will improve patient outcomes. The continued wave of public healthcare investment announcements in the West Side shows that healthcare providers have taken notice of the economic development and fast-growing population in our corner of the county, as well as West Lafayette's eagerness to work with those who are seeking to improve our community members' quality of life.”
Parkview Health’s plans revealed Thursday follows these recent hospital announcements in West Lafayette.
From IU Health: IU Health announced earlier in July that it would put $214 million into facilities in Greater Lafayette, including what was touted as West Lafayette’s first hospital with inpatient care and a new cancer center on the IU Health Arnett Hospital campus in Lafayette. Art Vasquez, president of IU Health’s West Region, told Based in Lafayette at the time that designs were expected to be done in 2025, with construction starting in 2026. Vasquez said IU Health was aiming to take the first patients in the new facilities, including the West Lafayette hospital, in mid-2028. As of Thursday morning, IU Health officials said a location for their West Lafayette hospital had not been pinned down.
From Franciscan Health: Franciscan Health announced plans in June to build a $25 million, 24,000-square-foot standalone emergency department near U.S. 231 and Cumberland Avenue, on land the hospital system has been signaling it would develop in West Lafayette for close to a decade. The project, as laid out by Franciscan Health, would include eight emergency exam rooms, including one equipped to handle trauma cases. That compares to Franciscan East’s emergency department on Creasy Lane in Lafayette with 28 rooms, including two fully equipped for trauma situations, attached to a 225-bed hospital. Terry Wilson, CEO of Franciscan Health in Lafayette, said at the time that while “we have talked about this forever … a couple of things have changed.” He attributed that to “enormous” growth projected in West Lafayette. “The number of people over there is impressive and more to come, with the (SK hynix) chip factory and other things,” Wilson said at the time. Hospital officials said construction was expected to in 2025 and be done within two years.
From Ascension-St. Vicent: Purdue and Indianapolis-based Ascension-St. Vincent have been talking about a neighborhood hospital near the corner of U.S. 231 and Airport Road in West Lafayette for three years. That project in Purdue’s Discovery Park District, first announced in 2022, had been stalled since shortly after a November 2022 ceremonial groundbreaking at the site. At the time, the anticipated $25 million micro-hospital project was supposed to be ready by spring 2024, with eight emergency treatment rooms, eight inpatient medical beds and CT and other imaging services. Ascension officials said they had overall plans that would come in closer to $70 million at some point. In April 2025, Purdue and Ascension officials confirmed that the project was still on, through neither specified whether services, space and other details would remain the same or had been changed. Stephan Masoncup, chief strategy officer for Ascension St. Vincent, in April told Based in Lafayette that the facility would include advanced urgent care, imaging, labs and primary care. The Indianapolis-based hospital system did not specify a timeline for construction or opening.
Thank you for supporting Based in Lafayette, an independent, local reporting project. Free and full-ride subscription options are ready for you here.
Tips, story ideas? I’m at davebangert1@gmail.com.
I'm not sure we should be happy about Parkview Health moving in. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/oct/17/indiana-medical-debt-parkview-hospital
Do we need 4 hospitals in West Lafayette? How about one big one with an emergency department and surgical center with in-patient rooms? The other thing the area needs is a long term acute care that can accommodate people on a ventilator so families don't have to travel to Indianapolis. I can tell you, it's awful.