SCHENECTADY — Hometown Well being Facilities is proposing to transform a vacant State Avenue pharmacy into a big dental clinic.
The group, which serves partially as a safety-net healthcare supplier for uninsured and underinsured folks, gained a big inflow of sufferers final yr when it took over Ellis Drugs’s dental clinic at 600 McClellan St.
Mixed with the present dental clinic it operates at 1044 State St., Hometown now serves 16,000 to 17,000 dental sufferers a yr.
Hometown Well being Facilities CEO Joe Gambino mentioned the group purchased the previous Ceremony Assist at 1108 State St. and plans to extensively renovate the 13,275-square-foot area.
With state and federal regulatory approvals, and permission from the Schenectady Planning Fee, which can evaluate the proposal March 16, the brand new clinic might open for operation in late 2022.
“We purchased the previous Ceremony Assist again in August and we’re very a lot on monitor for opening a brand new state-of-the-art dental facility, hopefully by the fourth quarter,” Gambino mentioned.
Hometown is seeing excessive demand for its dental companies.
“Dental is busy, no query about it,” he mentioned. “We’re principally the one sport on the town in relation to Medicaid companies for dental. Most suppliers don’t take it.”
The follow is cut up between two areas now — Ellis’ McClellan Avenue campus and Hometown’s predominant workplace simply down State Avenue from the ex-Ceremony Assist.
“We couldn’t accommodate Ellis’ full allotment of sufferers at our well being heart web site right here on State Avenue,” Gambino mentioned. “We determined to maintain that web site open till we really had the brand new web site open.”
Hometown expects its affected person quantity to develop, and hopes it can, Gambino mentioned. Its employees all the time pitches prevention to sufferers, however oral care is a kind of issues that tends to slip in communities with time, cash and transportation limitations.
Further dentists, hygienists and assistants are being employed. The brand new clinic might be full-range, together with normal dentistry, pediatric dentistry and oral surgical procedure.
Aesthetically, it will likely be very totally different from a cookie-cutter company drug retailer.
“The plans have an atrium that we’re going to place within the entrance that might be all-glass,” Gambino mentioned. “It’ll undoubtedly not appear like a Ceremony Assist, it can look way more trendy.”
The tab for all this, together with buy of the actual property, is anticipated to be $6.5 million.
To cowl the price, Hometown is making an attempt to place collectively a patchwork of funding sources together with the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, a grant from the Schenectady Basis, an appropriation via U.S. Rep. Paul Tonko, and its personal monetary reserves.
If all goes effectively, Gambino mentioned, development might begin in June.
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Classes: Business, News, Schenectady, Schenectady County
