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The private Christian university plans to use the space to expand health care education, including its programs in nursing and clinical mental health counseling.
Bushnell University will buy a portion of the property that housed PeaceHealth’s former University District hospital, using it to expand Bushnell’s health profession programs.
Bushnell University President Joseph Womack delivered the announcement at the university’s convocation on Tuesday, Aug. 26. He said the university signed a purchase and sale agreement with PeaceHealth for the properties “a couple weeks ago,” adding that it aims to “secure funding” and complete the purchase by the end of September. Terms of the sale were not disclosed.
“This is 10-plus years of our future development,” Womack told Lookout Eugene-Springfield after the announcement.
PeaceHealth Sacred Heart Medical Center, University District closed its emergency department in December 2023, citing underuse and financial losses. Many of its patients and providers shifted to PeaceHealth Sacred Heart Medical Center at RiverBend in Springfield.
In March 2025, PeaceHealth announced plans to sell the University District property — 1.2 million square feet of building space across 12.53 acres — while continuing to lease back space to keep clinics, urgent care and its inpatient behavioral health unit operating there.
“As longtime neighbors, PeaceHealth has notified both the University of Oregon and Bushnell University regarding the sale and will connect them with both the broker team and potential future developers,” PeaceHealth said in a March 2025 release.
Terms of the deal
The sale includes two buildings on East 11th Avenue between Alder and Hilyard streets. One, at 770 E. 11th Ave., currently houses PeaceHealth’s behavioral health unit. It is more than 88,000 square feet, according to PeaceHealth’s property listing.
The other, at 722 E. 11th Ave., is known as CMER Hall. It houses Bushnell’s nursing school and is more than 36,000 square feet, per the listing online.
The university will also purchase the small parking lot on the corner of Hilyard Street and East 11th Avenue.
The extra space will allow expanded enrollment in the nursing program and more graduates in clinical mental health counseling, according to a press release. Womack said the buildings will also allow Bushnell to launch new programs, possibly including occupational and physical therapies.
History of the partnership
The deal builds on a century of ties between the private Christian liberal arts university and the regional health care provider.
Preacher and educator Eugene C. Sanderson founded Bushnell in Eugene in 1895 near East 11th Avenue and Alder Street, the northwest edge of the University of Oregon campus. He believed ministerial schools should sit near public universities so students could combine theology, the Bible, oratory, and music with a broader education.
In 1924, Sanderson established Pacific Christian Hospital across the street from Eugene Bible School, the name then for Bushnell. (The school adopted its current name in 2020 to honor Bushnell’s first board of trustees chair.)
The Sisters of St. Joseph of Newark — later founders of PeaceHealth — purchased the financially struggling hospital in 1936 and renamed it Sacred Heart General Hospital. A nursing school within the hospital operated from 1942 until 1970, training more than 600 nurses.
That site eventually became PeaceHealth Sacred Heart Medical Center, University District.
In April 2023, PeaceHealth donated leased space — 11,300 square feet of clinical lab facilities on its University District campus — to Bushnell to help the university expand its 12-month Accelerated Bachelor of Science in Nursing program. The program has since received millions of dollars in grant funding to boost enrollment.
The expansion also comes at a critical time. Oregon is home to the highest number of licensed registered nurses ever, although staffing shortages in the profession and other medical fields remain an issue in the state and the country.
Bushnell enrolled 761 students in the 2024-25 academic year and has four residential buildings. With the PeaceHealth property purchase, the university will have expanded its campus capacity by 151% since 2012, Womack said.
PeaceHealth chief executive Jim McGovern said, “We’re excited to have the buildings really stay in the community and go from health care to health care education.”
