West Lafayette signs off on Parkview Hospital, balks at affordable housing study
Plus, judge rejects former trustee’s request to reconsider ruling in her defamation lawsuit against Wabash Township. Hybrid production starts at SIA. And a rental garbage truck?
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WEST LAFAYETTE SIGNS OFF ON PARKVIEW HOSPITAL, BALKS AT AFFORDABLE HOUSING STUDY
Parkview Health, a Fort Wayne-based hospital system, won the zoning it needed Monday night to plant a full-service hospital in West Lafayette.
The West Lafayette City Council had plenty of questions – about staffing, prices and competition in what’s been a sudden rush to build hospitals in a city that, until now, had none – but had no reservations about rezoning 26 acres in the Purdue Research Park from industrial to medical uses for a planned $200 million hospital.
The rezoning request passed unanimously.
Parkview Health is looking to open a 153,000-square-foot facility in 2028, with 40 inpatient beds with room for another 40-bed expansion later, four operating rooms and an emergency department. The campus also would include a 36,000-square-foot medical office building.
Parkview Health plans – east of Yeager Road, between Endeavour Drive and Kalberer Road – would mark the fourth proposed hospital, of some sort, for West Lafayette.
In one case, Parkview’s hospital would be a mile south of one IU Health Arnett has planned near the corner of Yeager Road and County Road 500 North. Last summer, IU Health announced that a $214 million investment in facilities in Greater Lafayette would include inpatient care and an emergency room just north of West Lafayette. IU Health’s rezoning was approved in December by Tippecanoe County commissioners.
Other hospital plans in West Lafayette include:
Franciscan Health, which has a hospital on Creasy Lane in Lafayette, 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 had been signaling it would develop in West Lafayette for close to a decade. That project was expected to be done within two years, hospital officials said.
Indianapolis-based Ascension-St. Vincent at Purdue have been talking about a neighborhood hospital near the corner of U.S. 231 and Airport Road in West Lafayette for more than three years. After an official groundbreaking in November 2022, the university and the hospital system have not specified a timeline for construction or opening.
City council members asked Parkview Health officials whether they were prepared for that landscape, including recruiting nurses and doctors at time when both are in short supply. The questions came in the shadow of recent pleas for legislative help from the Indiana Hospital Association, which contended last week that operating margins at hospitals in the state declined from 2.1% in 2024 to 1.9% in 2025. (See more on that here, reported last week in the Indiana Capital Chronicle: “Indiana hospitals warn of cuts, closures without lawmaker intervention.”)
Kristen Patton, a West Lafayette resident, asked for assurances that the city council was taking into account market forces to make sure Parkview’s rezoning “makes sense for our community,” given so many hospital proposals.
Scott James, chief operating officer for Parkview Health, told city council members that the system had taken staffing into consideration and that recruiting would start immediately, with hires moving into other Parkview positions until the hospital opens. James said Parkview Health was building a full-scale hospital as it looks to enter the West Lafayette market, contending the hospital would be more robust than the others.
“I don’t believe there’s going to be a lot of competition from those multiple services,” James said.
Peppered with questions about reports that questioned the cost of services at Parkview Health – including claims laid out in a December 2024 Guardian report: “‘Unlimited dollars’: how an Indiana hospital chain took over a region and jacked up prices” – company officials contended that the reporting was skewed and that Parkview had worked to lower prices, initiated a long-term contract with insurance providers to further reduce rates and formed a direct-to-employer insurance program that now insures 51,000 people.
“Cost of care is a daily focus for Parkview,” Tom Trent, asset strategy officer for Parkview Health, told council members.
During a public session in November at the John Dennis Wellness Center, Trent had told residents that the pending arrival of the $3.87 billion SK hynix semiconductor facility and the economic development in that part of the city were big in Parkview’s site selection.
Asked by council members if that still held true, given ongoing scrutiny of the chip assembly project, Trent said: “We have no concerns being located in near proximity to SK hynix. … We have studied what SK hynix is proposing to do, and we don’t believe that interferes with what the hospital is intending to do, which is to provide first rate health care to the community.”
Angel Valentin, Wabash Township trustee, urged the city council to back Parkview Health’s plan, saying that having emergency care in West Lafayette would keep the township’s ambulance in service in the township, if EMTs didn’t have to take patients to the community’s two hospitals on the east side of Lafayette.
Parkview Health officials have said a groundbreaking is expected in July 2026.
In other action …
CITY COUNCIL BALKS AT AFFORDABLE HOUSING STUDY PROPOSAL: The city council voted 5-3 against a measure two council members proposed for a study of incentives West Lafayette could offer to developers to include affordable housing in their residential projects.
