The 29th clinic for Peak Vista Community Health Center will open next year at 1105 S. Tejon St., across from Colorado Springs’ largest homeless shelter, the nonprofit organization announced Tuesday.
Peak Vista, which provides health care services for indigent and low-income residents, will raze a nearly 50-year-old vacant building on the land and construct The Tejon Health Center. Groundbreaking is scheduled for late summer.
The new facility will replace the Peak Vista Health Center at Rio Grande Street, spokeswoman Amy Welsh said.
“This is an optimal location that will increase access and care for our Rio Grande patients and others in the surrounding neighborhoods,” she said in an email.
The project will be paid for using grants, donations and restricted funds, Welsh said. Nor’wood Limited Inc. owns the land, which Peak Vista will lease, she said.
“Peak Vista has been offered a truly uncommon opportunity to design, build and operationalize a whole-person health center which will provide a substantial and needed enhancement to the services we provide to those at risk of, or who are currently experiencing, homelessness, as well as providing care to a quickly growing number of low-income residents and their families near downtown Colorado Springs,” Pam McManus, Peak Vista’s president CEO, said in a statement.
The Tejon Health Center will provide medical, dental and behavioral health care along with care coordination services.
Peak Vista staff members offer medical care on the campus of Springs Rescue Mission every day, serving up to 75 homeless people monthly during the COVID-19 pandemic and up to 300 clients each month in normal times, said Jeff Cook, the rescue mission vice president of operations.
“With the clinic on Tejon, this number could be as many as 400 to 500 clients each month just for physical health,” he said. “Those numbers would obviously increase greatly with dental and behavioral services.”
Having medical care on hand for clients reduces emergency 911 calls among the homeless population, Cook said.
“Thanks to Peak Vista’s presence on our campus, we have been able to drastically reduce our 911 calls, which in turn saves the city thousands of dollars,” he said.
The building to be demolished had operated for 22 years as Grindelwald German Delicatessan. Since the deli closed in 2008, the building has been used as a candle shop, a dry cleaners and an Italian restaurant.
This content was originally published here.
