Southwest clinic eyes new home
Southwest Community Health Center hopes to make this Fountaingrove office building the new center of its east Santa Rosa operations. It is located at 3569 Round Barn Circle.
JEFF KAN LEE/The Press DemcoratPublished: Saturday, December 26, 2009 at 7:59 p.m.
Last Modified: Saturday, December 26, 2009 at 7:59 p.m.
It already has a major hub on the west side of town, and now Sonoma County’s largest nonprofit health clinic is planning to move its east Santa Rosa operations from aging facilities to a gleaming, two-story building complex near Fountaingrove.
That is where Southwest Community Health Center expects to operate if it can quickly raise $1.3 million.
For about six months, the health center — which has four clinic sites — has been trying to raise enough money to qualify for $15 million in low-interest, tax-exempt bond financing. The project, which includes purchase of the property at 3569 Round Barn Circle and its transformation from office space to a medical facility, is expected to cost $17.5 million.
Southwest has raised $1.2 million of the needed $2.5 million.
“We’re currently getting 200 calls a week from people who want to become new patients, and we’re just unable to meet that need without the new facility,” said Naomi Fuchs, Southwest’s chief executive officer.
The V-shaped building that overlooks Highway 101 is owned by Equity Office Partners and is about 75 percent vacant. Its neighbors are the Fountaingrove offices of the Redwood Medical Group and a Kaiser Permanente medical office building.
The location is cosidered ideal because of its proximity to the Kaiser hospital complex on Bicentennial Way, Kaiser medical offices on Old Redwood Highway and the proposed new Sutter Medical Center just north of the city.
“The price is right and the market is right for getting a very good price on a building,” Fuchs said.
The new facility would double the size of the clinic’s Chanate Family Practice Center, a complex of trailer-like buildings that house numerous clinics. The Chanate Road health center also hosts the Santa Rosa family practice residency program.
“We need to be close to the hospitals for the residents,” Fuchs said. “They do their training at both Sutter and Kaiser.”
The medical services currently located at the 20,000-square-foot Chanate complex would be moved to the 42,500-square-foot Round Barn Circle facility. Southwest would continue to run its flagship clinic at Lombardi Court, as well as its teen clinic at Elsie Allen High School and the Roseland Children’s Health Center on Sebastopol Road.
Jesika Jennings, southwest’s capital campaign manager, said the health center’s administrative offices, split between Chanate Road and Lombardi Court, would be centralized in Fountaingrove. That would free up space at Lombardi Court, which Fuchs said will be expanded.
Among the large donors are Kaiser Permanente, Exchange Bank and Frank and Kathy Mayhew. Kaiser contributed $250,000 to Southwest’s capital campaign as a way of strengthening the safety net for the county’s uninsured and underinsured children and adults.
“The community clinics in Sonoma and Marin counties are vital elements of our local health care system,” said Judy Coffey, Kaiser’s vice president and area manager in Marin and Sonoma counties.
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