By Charles Owens
For Bluefield Daily Telegraph
Bluefield — Bluefield officials have unveiled their plans to convert a former nursing home into a new $6 million to $8 million medical facility that will include an urgent care component.
The plans for the former Mercer Nursing Home facility were made public last Friday during a meeting between city officials and U.S. Senator Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va.
An engineering graphic showing what the facility will look like once the project is complete was on display. It indicated the project will cost between $6 million to $8 million with funding coming from various sources, including $200,000 of foundation support; $300,000 in government support: $1.5 million in private investment; and $94,325 from the West Virginia First Foundation.
According to the “Community Health Infrastructure Initiative” design plans, the former nursing home will be upgraded to meet all safety and medical accessibility requirements and will bring approximately 80 new medical practicing employees into the city.
At the moment, a generic “Medical Health Facility” title is being used for the project since the private company involved has not yet been made public, according to Sam Wolford, executive director of the Bluefield Economic Development Authority, which is overseeing the project.
Wolford was asked what type of medical services the facility would provide.
“There are going to be multiple medical services, including urgent care and family physician,” Wolford said. “And some support for addiction. That’s badly needed in our area.”
Wolfofd said a target opening date for the center is 2028. There is still a lot of work that has to be done between now and then, including the completion of remediation work inside of the former nursing home. The existing structure is located just above McDonald’s off of Bluefield Avenue.
“We are very excited about the project as a whole,” Wolford said. “Obviously we’ve gotten some support from a local foundation and we have some governmental support. That’s gone into it as well as a commitment from a private corporation of up to $1.5 million. So we are moving forward with it.”
The new center will compliment ongoing projects in the city, including the new WVU Medicine Princeton Community Hospital emergency room that is being developed near the Health Pavilliion off of U.S. Route 460, according to City Clerk and assistant City Attorney Anthony Heltzel.
“This will be amazing,” Heltzel said. “We’ll have more accessible care. It will be right here in the downtown area.”
Heltzel the project will allow citizens to get timely medical care right in their own backyard.
The project is in the very early stages of development.
“We are currently in the process of pulling the engineering together,” Wolford said. “Doing the preliminary architectural review and then once we finish that we’ll start the engineering on the building. So the engineering company is working with the company that is interested in locating there, and they are doing the design based upon what the company is looking for.”
The existing structure has been vacant for a number of years now, last serving as a nursing home.
Read more from the Bluefield Daily Telegraph, here.
