HealthPartners officials expect to begin construction of a new $400 million Lakeview Hospital campus in Stillwater by the end of the month.

The Stillwater City Council on Tuesday night voted 5-0 to approve the organization’s plans for the new Lakeview campus at the northeast corner of Minnesota Highway 36 and Manning Avenue.

The vote covered a zoning map amendment/rezoning, site plan, conditional-use permit, planned unit development, height variance and preliminary and final plat.

Plans for the new hospital call for a six-story building totaling approximately 400,000 square feet — almost twice the size of the present Lakeview Hospital at Greeley and Churchill streets. Expected to open in late 2027 or early 2028, the new 64-acre hospital campus will include emergency medicine, advanced critical care and specialized centers for heart, cancer and orthopedic care, said Lakeview President Brandi Lunneborg.

Lunneborg told the council that a new and expanded hospital is necessary because the population of the St. Croix River Valley is expected to grow by an additional 5% over the next five years and that could be an 18% increase in the number of people 65 and older.

The current hospital, she said, is already often at more than 90% capacity, with no ability to grow in its current location.

“This will give us the room to grow over the next 75 years,” she said, adding that the new hospital campus is expected to create 250 to 300 new jobs in the first five years of operation.

Projections show an additional 23% growth in in-patient care and 32% growth in emergency room visits by 2032, she said, and specialty-care services, including cancer care, orthopedics and heart care, are expected to grow in demand by more than 15% in the next five years.

“This investment in our community is about two very important things: meeting the needs of the St. Croix Valley and surrounding areas and providing more care options close to home,” she said. “We’ve been providing excellent care in a welcoming environment for 140 years. We look forward to carrying on that tradition as we grow with the community we serve.”

The height of the hospital — six stories — exceeds the maximum height for the district by 35 feet, so a variance was required, said Ben Gutknecht, the city’s planning manager.

Mayor Ted Kozlowski said he was concerned about the height of the new building until he realized the Washington County Government Center in Stillwater “is almost as tall, if not taller.”

“You’ve demonstrated the need,” he said. “The building plan that you have designed makes sense for health care. I’m excited about this. But I want to make sure we do everything we can to minimize disturbance to neighbors.”

The council on Tuesday night also voted not to require an environmental-impact statement, a detailed environmental review of the project. The council, by a 5-0 vote, deemed that the environmental assessment worksheet that was done was sufficient.

Mitigation will be required to be provided in the final design of the project where impacts of potential environmental effects have been identified, Gutknecht said.

Among the concerns raised in comments in response to the EAW: snow storage and chloride impacts; truck access to the loading/receiving area; sustainable and resilient building construction; tree replacement; trails; building height and lighting; noise in the loading/receiving area, as well as general traffic noise; bird-friendly construction and practices; groundwater and wellhead protection; pollinator habitat; reuse of stormwater for irrigation; dust suppression; wetland impacts; and climate and heat-island considerations.

No one spoke during the public-comment session of the meeting.

Council member Larry Odebrecht said he is excited about the project. “All three of my kids and my wife were born at Lakeview,” he said. “This is a 100-, 150-year project for the city. It’s an incredibly important piece of infrastructure for the city.”

The council also voted on Tuesday night to spend $22,000 to purchase a strip of land along Minnesota Highway 95, currently owned by the Minnesota Department of Transportation, for a new parking lot proposed for Lumberjack Landing, the city’s new park north of downtown.

The parking lot will be located north of the existing city-owned parking lot and north of the Manitou Fund Arts and Education Building. When working on the preliminary design of the new lot, it came to the city’s attention that a portion of the new lot and a portion of the existing lot encroach onto MnDOT’s right of way, said Shawn Sanders, director of public works.

“They gave us the price of $22,000 for the purchase of the land,” Sanders said.

“Sold!” said Kozlowski.