A lobbying campaign has persuaded at least some Kansas legislators to reconsider where in Wichita a state-run psychiatric hospital should be located.
Despite being passed over by Governor Laura Kelly’s selection committee, the former Riverside Hospital complex is still being floated as an alternative to the undeveloped southwest Wichita site chosen through the open bid process.
Former Sedgwick County commissioner turned lobbyist Michael O’Donnell this month sent the Kansas Department of Aging and Disability Services a proposal to remodel the five-story hospital complex on west Central at a cost of $67 million, not including the price of the property.
To complicate matters, the city of Wichita has already been offered an option on Riverside Hospital for its planned homeless services campus, a key $20 million component of which is still in need of funding from the Kansas Legislature.
The psychiatric hospital proposal, commissioned by O’Donnell in his capacity as a lobbyist for I Thrive LLC and obtained by The Eagle, does not include a cost for purchasing Riverside Hospital from Gregory Lakin, the physician and former Republican legislator whose company hired O’Donnell as a lobbyist for the 2024 legislative session, secretary of state records show.
“I’m OK either way. Whether it be [bought by the] state or city either way,” Lakin told The Eagle. “As a provider, I just think the hospital needs to be bigger, and there is some urgency there.”
The official concept for the psychiatric hospital is a 50-bed facility that’s being designed with enough space to scale up to 100 beds if the Legislature chooses to allocate beyond the $70 million currently available for the project. Lakin said a remodeled Riverside Hospital could support 165 beds.
“A group of legislators are kind of wanting to check that out and make sure that we’re not missing an opportunity by not using the hospital,” said Will Carpenter, an El Dorado Republican state representative who sits on the panel appointed by Kelly that in January recommended the 11 acres at MacArthur and Meridian donated by Jeff Lange’s community foundation.
“We’re gathering information to do a side-by-side comparison of the two sites. Cost, advantages and disadvantages,” Carpenter said.
Sedgwick County in an email statement said changing the plan now would jeopardize $25 million in American Rescue Plan Act money that has already been earmarked for the project by violating federal guidelines that the procurement process be fair and open.
“By not following the process and going straight to decision-makers, an entity or person that does this falls outside the fair, open and equal access and must be precluded from participating,” the county statement reads.
Sedgwick County expects to close on the southside property in the next 90 to 120 days as part of its agreement with KDADS to handle land acquisition, site design and construction for the state hospital. Officials say the county will remain involved in the process only if the original site recommendation is upheld.
The hospital at MacArthur and Meridian would likely be the first project completed on a planned 70-acre behavioral health campus that’s expected to include housing, childcare and a park, among other things.
“It is disheartening to witness the efforts that threaten to derail the progress that has been made thus far,” OneRise Health Campus President Matthew Tannehill said in an email. “We are deeply troubled by attempts to disregard the thorough analysis and decision-making process conducted by Sedgwick County, the Governor’s Advisory Committee, and the Governor’s office directly.
“Our focus remains steadfastly on the vital work already underway to build this much-needed mental health hospital, in collaboration with KDADs and Sedgwick County.”
Commissioner Sarah Lopez said that’s still the best path forward.
“The other option of going to Riverside is now so out of scope of what we can do legally with ARPA dollars that the state Legislature is going to have to figure out, if that’s the route that is intended to go, where the money is going to come from because it won’t come from ARPA,” Lopez said.
Some lawmakers who control money needed to fund the project may be interested in pursuing the Riverside option anyways.
“The state can go and buy it. The state’s sitting on billions of dollars in reserves right now,” said O’Donnell, who narrowly lost to Lopez in the 2020 election and resigned his seat before the district attorney could pursue his removal on grounds of political corruption for his role in a false smear campaign and coverup.
“The Kansas Legislature is going to do what makes the most financial sense, and at the end of the day, the decision-maker is who has the money,” O’Donnell told The Eagle.
Scott Bruner, KDADS deputy secretary of hospitals and facilities, said at an advisory panel meeting last week that the direction he’s received from the governor’s office is to continue moving forward with the project as planned. The state agency hosted a community town hall about the psychiatric hospital at South High on Monday, where the lobbying push to have Riverside Hospital reconsidered was not mentioned.
Under the current plan, construction on the psychiatric hospital is expected to begin in November and run through October 2026, giving the facility an estimated opening date in January 2027.
Lakin, who runs an outpatient addiction treatment center in Wichita, said he believes Riverside Hospital could be remodeled and ready to open two years from today.
“From a patient care standpoint, we’re failing miserably,” Lakin said.
“We’ve needed a psych hospital for a long time and it needs to be sooner and bigger in my opinion. That’s me speaking as a doctor that sends people there.”
Wichita Republican representative Brenda Landwehr said she sees potential in the Riverside proposal.
“One, with the remodel, it means it’s going to be done faster. Two, we can get 60 extra beds,” Landwehr said.
Not everyone agrees remodeling the existing hospital complex would be an affordable or efficient option. The advisory panel selected Lange’s property over Riverside Hospital and two other finalist sites in part because it was the only property developers offered to donate, and because of the belief that renovating an existing building would likely be more expensive than starting from scratch.
“The reason why Riverside was passed on — it wasn’t even as much that it’s in the middle of a residential neighborhood. It’s more so what it would take to get that building up to code,” County Commissioner Ryan Baty said. “You’d probably have to tear that building down to do it. We didn’t feel like that was a good use of taxpayer dollars. We could build something, customize something to be a modern fit.”
Half of the beds in the new facility would be dedicated to acute in-patient care and the other half would be for people charged with crimes who need to be evaluated for competency to stand trial.
“The fact of the matter is, when you build this place, it’s got to be built like a jail because it’s housing our prisoners, plain and simple,” Sheriff Jeff Easter said.
At the advisory panel meeting last week, Easter expressed his dissatisfaction with the persistent lobbying efforts related to the project.
“We have been very open and transparent,” Easter said. “We’ve held community meetings. We’ve held surveys. I’ve never seen a single survey from Michael O’Donnell or the owner of [Riverside Hospital] . . . This appears to be backhanded politics, which I cannot be involved in.”
Landwehr questioned whether the planned 50-bed facility or even a 100-bed facility would actually have room for patients other than those transferred from the Sedgwick County Jail.
“Right now, we’ll fill up 100 beds with those that are sitting waiting for competency evaluations. That means there’s no room for anyone that voluntarily needs a psychiatric bed, and that’s what care and treatment is about,” Landwehr said.
Wichita Democrat Henry Helgerson, another representative on the advisory panel, said he and a number of other legislators were recently invited to tour Riverside Hospital. But he’s skeptical of the proposal.
“I told them, we’re going to need a dollar-for-dollar comparison before you even get in the front door,” Helgerson said. “The committee’s already made the decisions. We’re headed in that direction . . . And to overturn that, you’d have to have something overwhelmingly better that presented itself to the Legislature, to the county and anybody else involved. Right now, that has not happened.”
Riverside Hospital’s other possible use, as a multi-agency center aimed at alleviating homelessness, also likely hinges on money from Topeka.
Gov. Laura Kelly’s proposed 2025 budget includes $40 million in matching grant funds for local governments’ efforts to combat housing insecurity and connect homeless residents with needed services.
Wichita Mayor Lily Wu and a delegation of city officials traveled to Topeka in January seeking funding for a major project that would include a homeless shelter, transitional housing and a navigation center at an estimated cost of $80 million.
The state budget won’t be finalized for a matter of months, but last week, the House Social Services Committee trimmed Kelly’s homeless grant item from its own appropriations recommendation.
“Ask people in Riverside if they want a homeless transitional shelter. Because they don’t want that. I guarantee it,” O’Donnell said.
“For the people in Riverside, I’m not saying they’re going to be overjoyed that a mental health hospital could go there. But if you let them know that you can do homeless transitional housing or a secure mental health facility, at least with this, people aren’t coming and going. It’s a more secure facility.”
Lopez said both the psychiatric hospital and the city’s homeless resource center/transitional housing project are much-needed.
“These are two very important things that are happening in this community right now that have been needed for many, many years,” Lopez said. “I would hate to see both of them get derailed because of politics getting injected where they should not be, in something so important.”
The city is also considering HumanKind Ministries’ downtown campus as a potential site for its project, but it’s not yet clear if a purchase option on the property has been offered.
“We have so many good things going on right now,” Wichita City Council member Maggie Ballard said. “Why would you let politics jeopardize two of the biggest projects of mental health? I don’t understand what the game is.”
There is no set timeline for when the group of lawmakers will produce its comparison of psychiatric hospital sites, Landwehr and Carpenter said. As part of the process, a state architect will re-evaluate Riverside Hospital and provide feedback on its condition.
Landwehr said Sedgwick County’s concerns about losing out on ARPA dollars if the hospital site is moved don’t bother her because the federal relief funds can be reallocated by the state until the end of the year.
“We’ve got plenty of places to spend money.”
