Legislators consider changing planned location of future state psychiatric hospital

WICHITA, Kan. (KSNW) – The future of the South Central Regional Psychiatric Hospital planned for Sedgwick County is in limbo. The county and the state jointly chose the location last month, but state lawmakers may want a different spot now.

Work is already underway to develop the land near Meridian and MacArthur.

County commissioners say they’ve been working on getting a state psychiatric hospital in the county for years. They have already gone through a full process to choose the south Wichita location and followed proper procedure in choosing the location.

The governor gave the go-ahead to design a 100-bed hospital there, but the owner of the old Riverside hospital wants the state to buy his site instead. He says it can hold more beds.

One legislator says he’s not sure how a site change got brought up. He says that after the southside location was selected, he started hearing other legislators bring up the Riverside spot.

“Later on in this whole building process of building a new facility, I don’t want It out there that it should’ve been in a different location,” said Representative Will Carpenter (R-El Dorado).

Commissioners say switching locations will make them lose the $25 million in federal funds they have for the project.

“If the legislature wants to go a different route and go through riverside, it would be it wouldn’t be in compliance with our AARPA guidelines, and we would not be able to take part in the process at that point,” said Sedgwick County District 4 Commissioner Ryan Baty.

Baty says because the county would be missing that funding, they wouldn’t be able to help construct the new hospital. It would be up to the state to find a way to fund it.

Tune into KSN News at 10 p.m. with Zena Taher to learn how a new location choice could create delays for the hospital opening.