Plans to build a new, expanded Lakeview Hospital in Stillwater are moving forward, and HealthPartners hopes to break ground on the estimated $400 million project later this year.

The number of patients seen daily at the hospital has about doubled in the last five years, according to Lakeview Hospital President Brandi Lunneborg.

HealthPartners has targeted a site a few miles west of the current hospital, just north of Highway 36 at Manning Avenue North and 62nd Street North.

Lunneborg said the need for services has outgrown the existing facility, which was constructed in the 1960s.

At roughly 400,000 square feet, the new site “is about double the square footage from where we are today,” she said.

“It is a beautiful site with more natural features and just a lot more opportunities for us to develop additional services in the future and not be completely surrounded on all four sides like we are today, with no ability to grow.”

The added space will allow the hospital to expand its capacity for cardiovascular care, the intensive care unit, and the emergency department as the community continues to grow, Lunneborg said.

She said the emergency department alone saw nearly 19,000 patients last year but has just 11 rooms.

“We’ve added 2,000 to 3,000 surgeries over the last five years,” Lunneborg said. “We have a single CT scanner, a single MRI; those services have now outstripped that capacity. So it’s just, everything needs to grow a little bit.”

Last week, the Stillwater Planning Commission approved the latest update on the project regarding a required, ongoing environmental review. The city council is scheduled to hear a similar presentation on Tuesday. If approved by members, it would then go before the Minnesota Environmental Quality Board for review and publication.

In the meantime, HealthPartners continues to finalize site design plans, which were not public as of this report.

Initial plans were published late last year ahead of a few community engagement events. One of the biggest concerns for neighbors of the proposed site was increased traffic.

Lunneborg said they’ve been working with engineers to address those concerns with ongoing traffic flow studies and tentative plans to include a new traffic light and a roundabout near Manning Avenue North and 62nd Street North in the final site design.

“You only make this type of investment, you know, once every 70 to 100 years, so we want to make sure it is built to the right specs for what they’re gonna need today, as well as what we’ll need for the future,” she continued.

“So, we’re excited about the opportunity to design healthcare for the future.”

HealthPartners is scheduled to present the latest site design plans to the city council on March 26. There will be time for public comment during the meeting.

The hope, Lunneborg said, is to begin construction by the fall.