Purdue recruits Ascension St. Vincent for ‘neighborhood hospital’

Construction near U.S. 231 and Airport Road will start this summer on West Lafayette’s first hospital. One Lafayette hospital, left out, calls it ‘disappointing’

Today’s edition is sponsored by The Long Center for the Performing Arts, which is bringing America to Lafayette for the first concert in the new Loeb Stadium. For tickets and more details, click on this link and scroll through today’s Based in Lafayette reporting project.

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Ascension St. Vincent plans to build near the intersection of U.S. 231 and Airport Road. (Image provided)

PURDUE, ASCENSION ST. VINCENT PLAN ‘NEIGHBORHOOD HOSPITAL’ IN DISCOVERY PARK DISTRICT

West Lafayette Mayor John Dennis says he’s been hot about getting a hospital in the city and near Purdue University since the first of his four terms in office.

“In the early days when I was ranting and raving about the health care desert West Lafayette was, I would always get two basic responses,” Dennis said Friday. “Our resources are pretty busy working for what we have right now and that our market in West Lafayette wouldn’t support a full health care facility.”

That, Dennis said, was before the city’s population growth – spurred by double-digit enrollment growth on campus and a surge in housing in the past decade in and around the city – and a load of development that trailed a $120 million reworking of State Street.

“We became more attractive to large health care for investment,” Dennis said. “Bada-bing ...”

On Friday, three months after Purdue President Mitch Daniels first publicly hinted that a deal “very close,” Purdue and Ascension St. Vincent announced plans to build what they called a “neighborhood hospital” near U.S. 231 and Airport Road, in the university’s Discovery Park District just west of campus.