The County Press

McLaren to break ground on $27.5M project

New three-story ambulatory care center set for 2021 completion



The west side of McLaren Lapeer Region will look a lot different by the fall of 2021 after a new three-story, 90,000-squarefoot ambulatory building is constructed. Photo by Jeff Hogan

The west side of McLaren Lapeer Region will look a lot different by the fall of 2021 after a new three-story, 90,000-squarefoot ambulatory building is constructed. Photo by Jeff Hogan

LAPEER — Wednesday will mark a milestone in local health care.

Nearly three years in the making, a groundbreaking ceremony will be held on a $27.5-million project at McLaren Lapeer Region when work begins on a new three-story, 92,000-square-foot ambulatory care center to be located on the northwest corner of the healthcare campus that includes the Karmanos Cancer Institute. The new facility, said McLaren Lapeer CEO and President Chris Candela, is intended to retain and attract new physicians and specialists — and to provide Lapeer County-area residents access to healthcare services they may have otherwise left the community for elsewhere because they couldn’t be attained here.

McLaren Lapeer Region employs nearly 1,000 people. That number will likely grow as a result of the new project that aims to put services and healthcare providers under one roof that are currently scattered around the community. When complete in late summer/fall of 2021, the ambulatory care center will house McLaren staff located in the building known as the ‘Knollwood Clinic’ on North Main Street, just southeast of McLaren Lapeer. In addition, said Candela, outpatient rehabilitation services will be relocated from its current location on Suncrest Drive in Mayfield Township to the new building.

Candela is excited at the opportunity the project will mean for McLaren Lapeer, its patients and the City of Lapeer.

“It makes a statement to the community that we’re here for the long haul. This should affirm our future for the next 20 years,” said Candela, who appreciates the competitive nature of healthcare and the options many high-profile, well-known hospital groups in southeast in mid-Michigan offers patients and medical-field professional alike.

“My main job is to recruit new talent. When you find physicians and specialists they want office space outside the hospital from which to see their patients,” said Candela. “We didn’t have much of that. This new building will change that.”

Toward that end, Candela said his and McLaren Lapeer’s longterm goal is to develop rural residency. “The new building will provide the space and opportunity to bring doctors to our community. We want and need them to stay, and a stateof the-art building will be attractive to achieve that,” he commented.

The first floor of the new building is expected to contain orthopedic care, diagnostic/imaging and a lab, while the second floor of the new building is expected to house 12 different clinics.

Another high priority of Candela, is to expand McLaren’s presence in outlying areas. Currently in Brown City, Metamora and North Branch with clinics, Candela has future plans to be in Imlay City and south toward Lake Orion in northern Oakland County.

The new building, to include a brick façade, will be constructed west of the current hospital. In order to accommodate the building and added parking it needed more space on its campus, and embarked on an ambitious plan that took more than a year to move through the City of Lapeer planning office before its site plan was approved by the Lapeer City Commission.

McLaren purchased five houses on Barry Drive, with the intention to demolish the structures and remove the current roadway to make room for development. The new private drive, tentatively called McLaren Drive, will be located about 100 feet west of where Barry Drive is currently located. Demolition of the homes is expected to get underway soon.

The private road will remain open to the public, the only difference is that it will be McLaren Lapeer that will contract companies to plow snow from the street during the winter and perform other roadway upkeep rather than by the Lapeer Dept. of Public Works.

With the acquisition of new property, McLaren Lapeer owns approximately 44 acres for the new development — with room left over for an additional building should future needs and opportunities warrant.

McLaren Lapeer will retain ownership of the Knollwood Clinic indefinitely. “We want to have the space and option to move things to improve efficiency,” said Candela, who noted McLaren studied whether it was feasible and affordable to renovate Knollwood. Experts indicated the layout of the aging structure wasn’t conducive nor provided enough space to accommodate what McLaren Lapeer seeks to achieve with the new building.

McLaren Lapeer’s new building is expected to create approximately 250 construction jobs, and will stimulate the economy with local spending by contractors and their employees during the nearly two-year construction process.

Dale Kerbyson, Lapeer city manager, who will speak during Wednesday morning’s groundbreaking ceremony said, “It will have an important impact on the city, on multiple levels. First, there’s numerous jobs that will come out of this expansion, which is great for the community. There will be construction jobs and there will be new medical jobs.”

He added, “It’s also important to the level of healthcare services that will be available in the community, and there will be significant improvement in the community’s infrastructure. As part of the project they will be installing new water lines and it will also result in a brand new street.”