MIDDLETOWN — The two boards that oversee Middletown Regional Hospital weighed Thursday whether to build along Interstate 75 at Ohio 122 — a site long dismissed by the hospital president but favored by most local leaders.

        “We're certainly considering it,” said Robert Gage, chairman of the Middletown Regional Health System Board of Trustees. The board and trustees for the hospital broke late Thursday afternoon without making a decision. They might revisit the issue in the next month, hospital Vice President Larry James said.

        The group “was fairly evenly divided” between Ohio 122 and hospital President Doug McNeill's preferred site — south at Greentree Road — Mr. Gage said.

        The 84-year-old hospital needs to move out of central Middletown to expand and serve the growing populations in Butler and Warren, the trustees announced last year. They envisioned a campus with not only a hospital and doctors' offices, but also a medical academy, a YMCA, and research and development startups. Plans place the campus in Turtlecreek Township and Monroe, straddling I-75.

        However, residents of both Middletown and Turtlecreek objected, as did Warren County commissioners. City residents want health care to remain accessible, and township residents want their area to remain rural.

        The commissioners have lobbied to build at Ohio 122 — which has an interchange — instead of Greentree.

        Mr. McNeill has consistently rejected the suggestion, so Thursday's discussion marks a significant shift.

        The shift may have been prompted by the fact that Middletown City Council members have recently gotten bolder about their preference for the Ohio 122 site. The 500-acre-plus parcel is in the city, keeping the city from losing millions in income and property taxes.

        City officials worked up cost estimates for infrastructure such as roads, water and interchange improvements, Mayor David Schiavone said. Costs would be lower at Ohio 122, he said.

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