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LAFAYETTE - A proposed 175-bed hospital at the Lafayette Corporate Campus would increase the number of hospital beds in Boulder County from 407 to 582, or by 43 percent.
Planned expansion of area hospitals, including the capacity for growth to 350 beds at a hospital proposed by Exempla Healthcare, would create 899 beds within the county with the new hospital providing 39 percent of them.
Exempla Healthcare, which owns St. Joseph Hospital in Denver and Lutheran Medical Center in Wheat Ridge, wants to build the $170 million hospital on 88 acres at the Lafayette Corporate Campus, located just east of Highway 287 between Dillon and Empire roads.
Exempla has a contract pending to purchase the land from Denver-based Etkin Johnson Group.
If the proposed hospital is approved by the city of Lafayette, Exempla plans to complete the first phase of the project within three years, said Michael Morgan, a resident of the nearby Southpoint subdivision who attended a recent neighborhood meeting about the hospital.
"It was relatively heated," Morgan said of the meeting. "A lot of people there told them this thing was a bunch of garbage. Approximately half the meeting's attendees were opposed to the idea, and the other half "think it...