It is being hailed as the largest construction project currently taking place in the country, and officials from Indiana University (IU) Health said the new $4 billion healthcare campus in Indianapolis is on track to meet its 2027 full completion.
Construction of IU’s new 2-million-square-foot hospital and expanded medical campus in Indianapolis began in 2022. The new hospital, being built at 16th Street and Capitol Avenue, will consolidate operations of two aging IU Health hospitals – Methodist and University hospitals – in an anticipated operations savings of $50 million a year. In addition to the hospital, the 44-acre campus will include four new modern, innovative buildings that will house offices, clinical and retail spaces, a central utility plant, parking garages, and a medical education and research facility. Walkways and tunnels connected through the three 16-story high towers at the hospital will streamline access to services and care for patients.
“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime project that I am extremely proud to be part of,” said Jim Mladucky, IU Health Vice President of Design and Construction. “It aligns with IU Health’s goal of helping make Indiana one of the healthiest states in the nation.”
Evolution of a Concept
Though construction began in 2022, Mladucky said conception of the project started much earlier – a decade ago when the idea of a new downtown hospital project was on a much smaller scale and about a quarter of the investment cost.
“At the time, the new downtown hospital project was going to be a billion dollars. That was a big deal in 2015,” he said. “That kicked it off. From there, we engaged faculty and other stakeholders, our patients, their families, and advisory committee, to get a better understanding of where the new hospital should land.”
Mladucky said the collaboration led officials to the obvious choice of a consolidation project capitalizing on the amount of land the health system had at 16th and Capitol. The ample space also provided the opportunity for Indiana University to move its School of Medicine from 10th Street to the new campus, providing a more cohesive learning environment for students. Mladucky said construction on the new Medical Education and Research Building is “substantially complete” and is on schedule to open to students in the fall of 2025.
As crews navigate the next phases of the construction project around a fully operational medical school, Mladucky said much of the attention will focus on the hospital itself, where the last concrete pour was made in March 2025 and crews are expected to have the building enclosed by October. From there, construction will continue in the interior of the hospital, which will include 50 operating rooms, 380 outpatient rooms, and 864 patient beds. The campus will also feature three clinical institutes for care in the areas of cancer, cardiovascular, and neuroscience.
The South Support Building, an eight-level structure serving as the main parking garage for the hospital as well as housing for supply chain services, a morgue, mail room, retail space and more, is scheduled to be completed this fall as is the central utility plant, he said.
As of February 2025, over 2.1 million work hours were spent on construction for the hospital and nearly 3.4 million work hours have been poured into the entire campus, IU officials noted.
“Things are moving, and moving quite rapidly now. We are really getting traction,” said Mladucky. “To date, 1,700 people are on the job site daily, and the hospital has 1,400 of them. There is a lot of work being done on every single floor there. There is a lot to do, and they are doing fantastic work.”
Sustainability and Inclusion
From the onset of the project, Mladucky said IU Health officials prioritized commitments to sustainability, both during construction and beyond, as well as its supplier diversity program.
Before construction even began, IU Health crews cleaned up a brownfield to rid the site of contaminated soil. From there, construction plans incorporated environmentally sustainable features, including a curb-side appealing eco-park for stormwater management. The buildings are U.S. EPA Energy Star rated and U.S. Green Building Council LEED certified. Mladucky said while officials targeted LEED silver-certified, all of the projects on the campus are tracking gold-certified.
Mladucky said sustainability considerations were also made in the design process to ensure the state-of-the-art campus is adaptable and resilient.
“What we know about technology is that it’s going to change. We expect technology to change how care will be delivered 10 years from now compared to how it is delivered today. Designing and building the buildings to adapt to that was critical,” he said. “We built a module that allows for an infrastructure that can change as care evolves. That way, we can do renovations quickly and keep the buildings relevant for 50-75 years.”
Mladucky noted that economic sustainability also remained a top priority for IU Health in the planning and execution of the project. The health system vowed to keep dollars in the state and support XBE (minority-, women-, veteran- and locally-owned businesses) as much as possible.
“So far, we have invested almost $400 million in the XBE community, and we expect that to grow through the end of the project,” he said, noting that the majority, or about 85 percent to 90 percent, of the partners, contractors, architects and engineers are based in the Hoosier state.
Mladucky noted that investing in local businesses paid off well for the project, as IU Health was able to form a highly qualified labor force for the project, despite competition from about $138 billion dollars in construction projects happening within a 200-mile area of the new campus.
“I live in Indianapolis. I grocery shop in Indianapolis. Those I meet while I am shopping or when I go to church are the people who are working on this job site. They have a vested interest in this community. They have an invested interest in the success of this campus. That’s who I want on our side when we are building the biggest healthcare project in the country.”
