HealthPartners officials shared plans for a proposed $400 million Lakeview Hospital campus at the northeast corner of Minnesota 36 and Manning Avenue with the Stillwater City Council last week.

Next week, they plan to share them with nearby residents.

HealthPartners is holding an open house from 4 to 7 p.m. Tuesday at The Lakes at Stillwater to give community members a chance to meet hospital team members and architects working on the new campus. Officials plan to share the results with a community engagement survey carried out last spring; over 1,200 people responded.

“Our teams are excited to take the next step forward and engage directly with those who will use our services,” said Brandi Lunneborg, president of Lakeview Hospital. “We are so excited to meet directly with community members answering questions and hearing their ideas. These conversations will further inform the design.”

HealthPartners presented on November 6 a request for review of the conceptual plan to the Stillwater City Council for the 64-acre hospital campus. The new hospital, expected to open in late 2027 or early 2028, will include emergency medicine, advanced critical care and specialty centers for heart, cancer and orthopedic care.

The hospital is proposed to be 104 feet high; an architect’s rendering of the building shows it to be six stories high. That height exceeds current zoning limits — three storeys in a public administration district — so council members were asked to assess whether the height is appropriate for the area, “taking into account potential visual impacts and any flexibility available with a planned unit development or height- transition strategies,” according to a staff memo included in the board packet.

Council members requested more detailed drawings that show the scale of the height with the surrounding area, City Administrator Joe Kohlmann said.

Lakeview patients and their families, our colleagues and clinicians deserve a thoughtfully designed destination that supports all that health care is for a community: a welcoming and safe place of health and healing; a beacon of hope and compassion,” Lunneborg said. “We are so fortunate to also have a new location that offers natural beauty, visibility and ease of navigation for those seeking health care services. This new hospital campus is a necessary and rare opportunity to strengthen our commitment to community health as we partner with those who care to create a hospital campus that everyone can be proud of.”

Communication concerns

Some residents who live near the site of the new hospital, however, expressed concern that they didn’t learn about Lakeview’s plans until they checked the Stillwater City Council agenda for the Nov. 6 meeting.

“While I realize and understand that there are delays in planning for such a large-scale construction project, the hospital’s lack of communication and engagement with our neighborhood has been minimal, to say the least,” said Kelly Seivert. “Lakeview is moving into our neighborhood. Our wonderful neighborhood was established in 1999 and we deserve and expect more detail, communication and solid answers about how this will affect our homes, our daily lives and our neighborhood.”

Owner Rebecca Lentz, who expressed concern about an increase in traffic on street 62 once the land is developed, said he also found out about Lakeview’s plans “just looking at the city council agenda.”

Lakeview officials promised last March to hire nearby landlords by mid-summer, Lentz said.

“This is poor planning, absent civic engagement, broken promises and an embarrassing lack of public engagement,” Lentz said.