Idaho Urologic Institute is building a new clinic in Nampa. Image courtesy of Idaho Urologic Institute.
Idaho Urologic Institute broke ground Jan. 9 on a new Nampa clinic near the relocated Saint Alphonsus Medical Center Nampa I-84/Garrity.
The new, 3,600-square-foot urologic institute will be on Hunt Avenue, across the freeway from Saint Alphonsus and near the Ford Idaho Center. The group’s previous Nampa location was a 2,000-square-foot building, now closed, across the street from Saint Alphonsus’ former Nampa hospital on 12th Avenue.
The new, larger Nampa structure will allow Idaho Urologic Institute to have three urologists working at the same time. In the old location, three urologists rotated one a day, CEO Greg Feltenberger said.
Construction is just starting on a new Idaho Urologic Institute clinic in Nampa across from the Ford Idaho Center. Image courtesy of the Idaho Urologic Institute.
Idaho Urologic Insitute was established in 2005 as 10 independent urologists unified their existing offices in Boise, Meridian, Nampa and Mountain Home under one banner. Early on, a new office was built in Meridian and this $800,000 Nampa office is the second built from the ground up, Feltenberger said.
The new Nampa clinic with nine exam/treatment rooms and one procedure room is expected to open in July or August.
Dave Evans Construction of Boise is the architect and general contractor.
Northwest Neurobehavioral Health’s new independent mental health clinic is being built in the Gramercy District of Meridian. Image courtesy of C|T|Y Studio.
Construction started at the end of February at the Gramercy District in Meridian on a new office for Northwest Neurobehavioral Health.
The Meridian multi-disciplinary diagnostic and treatment center has expanded several times in existing space at the nearby Goldstone Center since 11 clinicians founded the clinic in 2010. This has resulted in Northwest Neurobehavioral splitting into two sections of the same building, separated by a corridor, with two lobbies, and no windows in many offices.
“We’ll have one lobby instead of two (in the new building),” said Laura Curtis, a managing partner and clinical social worker at Northwest Neurobehavioral.
NNH collaborated with commercial real estate entities Tenant Realty Advisors and Thornton Oliver Keller. Architect Rob Thornton, a principal at C|T|Y Studio, designed the building to NNH clinician specifications.
Curtis said the clinicians asked for a building where all the clinicians could be in the same structure, with sunlight in the rooms and in Meridian.
“We have always wanted to build. Always,” Curtis said. “We’re amazed with what they have been able to put together.”
Gramercy District project manager Taylor Merrill welcomed the idea of an independent mental health clinic for the 80-acre mixed-use development with commercial, office and housing on Overland Road between Eagle and Locust Grove roads.
“These guys are preferred providers of adolescent behavioral counseling,” Merrill said. “There is a demand for that service in this valley. We like the fact we have the health industry here.”
Gramercy is the general contractor on the project.
“What I liked was the time they spent getting to know us,” Curtis said about Gramercy.
Northwest Neurobehavioral will be an early development in the district’s Gramercy Plaza commercial area. It will go in the middle third of the property, which is only about 15 percent developed. The Gramercy Village retail section along Overland is about 90 percent complete and the residential Gramercy Park area at the rear is about 80 percent developed with apartments by Gramercy Villas and The Fields at Gramercy, Merrill said.
NNH did not know what sort of new home they could expect when they reached out to Greg Gaddis at Tenant Realty Advisors. Gaddis said his company helped them find a developer with a suitable location.
“We engaged a developer to build a build-to-suit,” he said. “You don’t see many of those around here.”
Northwest Neurobehavioral Health will be built at Gramercy District within sight of Mountain View High School (rear). Photo courtesy of Laura Curtis.
NNH entered into a lease-to-own agreement with Gramercy, Curtis said.
NNH has a multidisciplinary approach to exploring mental health, behavior, development, and emotional needs of children and adults. The center performs 16 psychological evaluations per week and sees 85 to 100 people a day. More than 2,400 clients made 23,925 visits in 2016, Curtis said.
“Some families come to NNH once. Other families want their own parking spot,” she said.“Rural Idaho is coming to us.”
NNH clients come from as far as Grangeville, eastern Oregon and Mountain Home, Curtis said.
NNH now has 32 clinicians who provide neuropsychology, psychology, counseling, autism diagnostic clinic services, occupational therapy, speech and language therapy, and medication management.
“We are able to expand services at Gramercy,” Curtis said. “We will be able to provide more counseling. We tend to attract families with more complex medical needs. We need to expand psychological assessment.”
The building that Thornton designed has windows and skylights to allow daylight into interior sections of the 18,500-square-foot structure. It will have a large, open reception area and fewer offices in favor of “nicer, bigger, taller” cubicles in an open area. Hallways will be wider with a lower ceiling, Thornton said.
“We’re bringing light further into the place as best as we can,” Thornton said.
NNH expects to move into the new space in September or October.
The Idaho Center for Reproductive Medicine will occupy a new medical office building on Park Boulevard in downtown Boise. Image courtesy of Gardner Company.
The Idaho Center for Reproductive Medicine will move into a new medical office building that developer Gardner Company is building at the east end of downtown Boise.
The 27,000-square-foot, one-story structure will be located on 2.6 acres on Park Boulevard where it converges with Front Street and Parkcenter Boulevard.
Construction is starting in December and is expected to take about 10 months, said Tommy Ahlquist, Gardner’s chief operating officer.
Okland Construction is the general contractor and Babcock Design the architect. Both are based in Salt Lake City as is Gardner Co.
The Idaho Center for Reproductive Medicine, which describes itself as the state’s only nationally certified reproductive endocrinology and fertility clinic, will fill 9,000 square feet at its projected move-in date in December 2017. The clinic has had a 5,800-square-foot space about six blocks away on Main Street since 2004.
Cristin Slater
“We’ve outgrown this office,” said Cristin Slater, a physician who is the center’s owner and medical director. “We are going to have our dream lab. We will have improved employee conditions. Everybody will have their own office.”
The clinic will have a Class 1,000 (ISO 6) clean room air filtration system.
Patients will be able to remain in one room for several services with “less shuffling of patients” from room to room, Slater said.
The remaining square footage may be occupied by St. Luke’s Health System as well. St.Luke’s has no signed lease yet with Gardner, said Anita Kissée, St. Luke’s public relations manager.
“The location is well-suited for primary care, but St. Luke’s is also interested in a flexible design that could serve any of our specialties,” Kissée said.
The Idaho Falls office of Aspen Dental opened July 14. Photo courtesy of Aspen Dental.
Syracuse, N.Y.-based Aspen Dental Management Inc. is investing about $1.2 million to construct dental buildings for four independent practices in Idaho Falls, Nampa, Pocatello and Lewiston.
Aspen Dental provides a brand name and non-clinical business support services – including real estate – to independently owned and operated dental practices.
Aspen, which is involved with at least 565 dental practices in 34 states, opened its first Idaho office on July 14 in Idaho Falls.
Construction is underway now in Pocatello with an expected December opening. Nampa construction started in September with the goal of a mid-March opening, but work has not started in Lewiston, said Kasey Pickett, Aspen’s director of communications.
All Aspen Dental buildings are built from the ground up, usually in retail settings like shopping centers.
“They’re not in traditional health centers,” Pickett said. “It’s much more looking at retail centers, stand-alones in front of a Target. Like a lot of changes in health care (drug stores with clinics; urgent care clinics), this is a move toward consumerism.”
Aspen Dental’s Pocatello location is at the Pine Ridge Mall; the Nampa office is in the Treasure Valley Marketplace; the Idaho Falls location is across from the Edwards Grand Teton 14 cinema; and the Lewiston office at 2320 Thain Road near Shopko and Big 5 Sporting Goods.
Aspen has a real estate team that does site selection in communities, and Aspen works with a few national general contractors to build the Aspen Dental facilities. The contractor typically hires local subcontractors, Pickett said.
“It’s been a pretty smooth process in Idaho identifying sites and getting to construction,” Pickett said.
Aspen Dental was founded in 1998 but only arrived in the western states in 2008 in Arizona and in 2009 in Washington and Oregon. Aspen seeks locales with dental health professional shortages as identified by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Pickett said.
Aspen has a standard office prototype design and an in-house architect who makes minor design changes if needed at specific locations.
Aspen Dental practices cover all facets of general dentistry. Each location has a lab and lab technician to make dentures in-house, Pickett said.
The new Summit Professional Medical Center is across I-84 from the Saint Alphonsus Medical Center – Nampa site. Photo courtesy of Turin Investments.
A two-story 20,126-square-foot medical office building is nearing completion in Nampa in anticipation of the summer 2017 opening of the new Saint Alphonsus Medical Center – Nampa.
The Summit Professional Medical Center at 16211 N. Brinson St. sits across from the Ford Idaho Center, just south of the College of Western Idaho – and just across the freeway from the 100-room new Saint Alphonsus hospital construction site that is dominating the Garrity Boulevard skyline.
Meridian-based Turin Investments is betting that physicians will want office space near the hospital with this $4 million investment. So far, the only lease signed involves 2,900 square feet for Allante Life Med Spa.
“People are saying ‘You are building a 20,000-square-foot spec building?’” said Dyan Chacon, manager of Turin Investment and accountant at Dave Evans Construction, the project’s general contractor. “Two tenants are looking quite seriously. If they sign leases, it will be filled.”
Until then, Summit has 7,187 square feet available on the ground floor and 10,063 square feet on the second floor for purchase or lease.
Chacon said if the building leases out quickly, the investors are willing to build a second, identical building next door. A third office building is not out of the question.
“We just don’t know the demand,” Chacon said. “We are just testing the waters.”
The building was designed by Robert Powell, a staff architect at Dave Evans Construction.
Radiographer Kate Garrett inspects the X-Ray room at Direct Orthopedic Care’s new clinic on Broadway. Photo by Patrick Sweeney.
Four doctors decided to take a shot at opening an orthopedic urgent care clinic in Boise a little over a year ago – a place to go with a broken bone, be seen in 10 minutes or less and be on your way in an hour.
It’s not the service you would get in a hospital emergency room or even at an orthopedist’s office, said David Hassinger, founder of Direct Orthopedic Care, which just opened its second Boise clinic.
They had no idea how Direct Orthopedic Care would go over with patients. Hassinger, his brother Sean Hassinger, Mark Spelich and Travis J. Kemp teamed up to convert a set of traditional doctors’ offices they already occupied into an urgent care center for bone-related ailments.
Instead of setting up appointments for next week, the same address now welcomes walk-in patients.
The four opened Direct Orthopedic Care in October 2014 on Rifleman Street with no sense that soon they would have to add “first” when referring to that location. A second Direct Orthopedic Care opened Dec. 5 at Broadway and Boise Avenue, a third will open Jan. 15 on Marketplace Boulevard in Nampa and a fourth is set to open in May in Meridian near St. Luke’s Meridian Medical Center.
“That evolved later on,” David Hassinger said. “We opened one to see how it goes, see how the patients liked the model.”
The patients loved the model and traveled to the clinic near Boise Town Square from as far away as Nampa and Harris Ranch. In February, the doctors regrouped and outlined an expansion plan.
“It was patient-driven,” Hassinger said. “Other physicians wanted to be involved.”
David Hassinger
The founding group of four doctors has expanded to 10 doctors and 15 partners to staff the growing operation. For now, they are set with four locations in Treasure Valley, but if physicians elsewhere in Idaho express an interest, Direct Orthopedic Care is willing to consider other cities, Hassinger said.
The Rifleman and Broadway/Boise clinics went into existing buildings and cost $565,000 and $250,000, respectively, to outfit. Nampa and Meridian will be newly constructed structures costing $1.3 million and $3.5 million, respectively, Hassinger said.
Urgent care facilities across the Treasure Valley and elsewhere primarily focus on illnesses, not injuries, said Marshall Baker, chief executive of Physician Advisory Services, a Boise company that provides consulting and strategic positioning services to physicians and hospital.
“I think what Direct Orthopedic Care does is a unique model,” Baker said. “I have not seen it in other markets.”
Overall, urgent care facilities are a growing industry.
“Private practice groups are opening urgent care centers to keep their patents from going elsewhere,” Baker said.
Direct Orthopedic Care does for bones what Primary Health Medical Group does for general health care: provide urgent care at a faster and much less costly rate than a hospital ER, and faster than the traditional doctor’s office, such as Hassinger and his partners had before opening DOC, he said.
“It was traditional medical offices: ‘We’ll get you in next Wednesday,” Hassinger said about the Rifleman offices before they were converted to urgent care. “This is specialty-specific urgent care. We are available seven days a week. If you go to an ER, you’re not seeing an orthopedic specialist. You get sent to a specialist. Here, usually, you can get in within 10 minutes and you’re treated and done within 45 minutes or an hour.”
DOC handles the full gamut of orthopedic ailments, including fractures, tendonitis, arthritis, dislocations, sprains, and ligament and meniscus tears. Primarily, it’s the two seasons of orthopedic care.
“The biggest thing we see during ski season is knee injuries,” Hassinger said. “In summer, it’s shoulder separations and clavicle fractures (from cycling accidents).”
Oral surgeons Eric Nelson and Kevin Kempers constructed a new building for their practice with louvered window systems and a strip of clear coated rusted steel. Photo by Patrick Sweeney.
The future for the Main Street and Whitewater Park Boulevard intersection starts with the new, two-story, two- shades- of-gray-and-a-bit-of-rust structure. It was built by oral surgeons Kevin Kempers and Eric Nelson for their newly merged Whitewater Oral Surgery Group practice.
Back when they started construction, Whitewater Park was still 30th Street, in a part of town with no vibrancy to speak of. Whitewater was built as a broad, new primary route between Main and State Street, boasting two lanes in each direction, a center turn lane, bike lanes plus curbs and sidewalks.
The intersection, however, has yet to catch up with the sleekness of Whitewater Park Boulevard. The Whitewater Oral Surgery Group headquarters shares the intersection with a huge vacant lot stretching from Main to Fairview, a large parking lot and the low-slung, brick Eberlestock, a shooting sports equipment company.
“We have a vision that this part of town will be moving up,” Nelson said.
The two built 20,000 square feet for $5 million with a third financial partner, but they are using just 7,900 on the ground floor. The upper floor has no improvements.
“We know we overbuilt for now,” Kempers added. “We’re not even on the whole first floor.”
There are no tenants lined up for the rest of the building.
“It would be great to keep it all medical or dental,” said Kempers, who grew up in Colorado and attended medical school at Pennsylvania.
“We want to bring young guys in eventually and expand,” said Nelson.
The pair’s 20,000-square foot “contemporary and clean” structure was designed by Boise-based erstad ARCHITECTS. The two decided to build partly to get out of their individual leased offices. Nelson’s was near St. Luke’s Health System, where patient parking was a problem, he said. Kempers’ was in an Emerald Street space that was showing its age.
The new Whitewater Oral Surgery building features jumbo platinum brick (left), dark gray concrete panels, and some clear coated rusted steel panels. Photo by Teya Vitu.
Kempers and Nelson are both oral and maxillofacial surgeons with the dental DDS and medical MD after their names.
OMS typically are solo practices, but after knowing each other for 16 years in the Treasure Valley – both arrived in Boise in 1999 – Nelson and Kempers decided it made sense to build a joint space rather than a building for just one doctor.
“We wanted to start something new and different,” Nelson said. “We don’t want to be competitive. We want to be collaborative.”
They kept all 12 employees from their individual practices. They moved in Jan. 14.
They said they chose erstad, which redesigned the Parkcenter Mall for the Sage International School and designed the interiors for the imaging center at West Valley Medical Center, because they wanted to create a building with character and style.
“We wanted it to be a little more of an art piece,” Nelson said.
Cheryl Pearse, erstad architect, opted for sections with dark gray concrete panels and other sections with jumbo platinum brick, both shades of gray offset by a strip of clear coated rusted steel panels framing the ground floor windows. There are different size windows within identical rectangular frames.
“That was just to make the composition a little more interesting,” erstad Principal Andy Erstad said. “The idea was to create a very contemporary, clean structure that would be timeless. You’re not going to identify it with an architectural style.”
Upstairs, the windows are accented with louvered shade systems.
Inside, the waiting room walls are four shades of blue set off with water themed artwork, more serene waterfalls and pools in the waiting room and more active paddleboarders and rafters in exam rooms, to reflect the name of the company, Whitewater.
Dr. Eric Nelson and Dr. Kevin Kempers in their new office at Main and Whitewater Park Boulevard. Photo by Patrick Sweeney.
The waiting room furnishings offer an eclectic mix of bar-height tables with high chairs, soft sided seats, and chairs with wood arms and backs.
“The idea was to make it comfortable for the patient and give them a different experience,” Erstad said.
Guho Corp. was the contractor.
Although the building is surrounded by an empty landscape, the location makes logistic sense, Kempers and Nelson said.
“This is right between both hospitals, right on an artery and right by the Greenbelt,” said Nelson, noting that traffic is no issue on Main. “It’s not like Eagle Road. Everybody has it so much easier than my old office. There’s a lot of parking here.”
We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience by remembering your preferences and repeat visits. By clicking “Accept”, you consent to the use of ALL the cookies.
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may have an effect on your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
Sign In
Free Newsletter
