Mount Nittany aims to bring services back to Bellefonte with new medical office building

For the first time in nearly 50 years, Mount Nittany Health could be bringing its medical services back to Bellefonte Borough.

Sketch plans for a two-story, 40,000-square-foot medical office building at 945 E. Bishop St. were presented by HRG Project Engineer Mark Saville at Tuesday’s Bellefonte Borough Council work session.

The building would be located in the empty lot between the health care provider’s corporate offices and the former Bellefonte Armory. The parcel also includes a small piece of the armory’s land that was subdivided in late 2025.

According to Saville, the new building would house a walk-in express care clinic and an imaging clinic, and it would take over some of the services that are offered at the health care provider’s 141 and 129 Medical Park Lane locations in Spring Township, just over the township’s border with the borough.

“We’re also going to be relocating the current primary care clinic and lab and the pediatric care clinic and center for child advocacy from their current Bellefonte [area] locations into this consolidated medical office building, in order to better serve this Bellefonte community,” Saville said. “We’re looking forward to bringing more of these services back into Bellefonte at this location.”

It’s too early in the project’s development process to determine a cost of building the new building, Mount Nittany Chief Facilities Management Officer Bob Donahue told the CDT on Tuesday.

A return to Bellefonte Borough

Because the presentation was only for sketch plans, no official council action was taken. But if the eventual final land development plans are approved, the new building would mark the first time Mount Nittany has provided medical services in Bellefonte Borough in 47 years.

Mount Nittany Health, which before 2003 was called Centre Community Hospital, previously operated the Bellefonte Hospital at what’s now Centre County Government’s Willowbank Building.

According to Mount Nittany’s history website, in 1972, the increased demand for medical services across the county led to the construction of the health care provider’s Mountainview Unit, which would eventually become the Mount Nittany Medical Center at 155 Wellness Way in College Township.

The Bellefonte Hospital’s services were consolidated there in 1978, and the location at the Willowbank Building closed.

According to the sketch plans, parking will be located at the sides and rear of the new building, and a six-foot privacy fence will be installed around the property to provide noise and visual screening for the residential neighborhood located behind the building.

Access to the building will be from a new, full-movement driveway on East Bishop Street and a connection with the parking that’s used by the corporate offices. A traffic impact analysis is currently underway, although Saville does not believe a new traffic signal at the East Bishop Street entrance will be needed.

Moving forward, Saville told the council Tuesday that he anticipates a formal development plan to be submitted “in a month or so.”

Other Mount Nittany Health projects

The new Bellefonte location is one of several recent projects from the Centre County health system.

The health care provider is constructing its 10-story, 300,000-square-foot patient tower, which started in the summer of 2023 and is expected to open later this year.

In 2024, Mount Nittany completed construction on its $90 million Toftrees outpatient center, and opened its first express care facility.

In June 2025, Mount Nittany also spent $6.28 million on a plot of land along Rishel Hill Road in the Benner Pike corridor, but has not disclosed what will be built there.