Mancos clinic takes step closer to reality

Mancos clinic takes step closer to reality

Jan. 22, 2002

RANDY SMITH, president of the Montezuma County Hospital District board, signs the Mancos Clinic purchase contract Friday. The hospital district, by purchasing the property at 111 Riverside Ave. in Mancos from Michael and Alice O’Traynor, cleared the way for the building to be remodeled, for Dr. Dale Strietzel to move his Mancos Family Dentistry practice into the building and for medical clinic operations to begin when funding is available.

By Tom Vaughan
Mancos Times Editor

With a few strokes of his pen Friday, Montezuma County Hospital District President Randy Smith changed the health-care landscape in Montezuma County.

The MCHD is now the owner of the former Mancos medical clinic property at 111 E. Railroad Ave. in Mancos. After leasing the property from Michael and Alice O’Traynor for several months while putting the deal together, the hospital district paid the O’Traynors the remainder of the $245,000 purchase price on Friday.

"We’ve been working on this a long time," Smith said.

The deal was contingent on arranging a lease with Dale Strietzel, D.D.S., to use a portion (1,386 square feet) of the building for his dental practice, Mancos Family Dentistry.

Strietzel signed a five-year commercial lease with the district on Jan. 15. Provisions in the lease, effective Jan. 1, 2002, waive payment while Strietzel remodels his portion of the clinic building. His work will be coordinated with the work MHCD plans for the building, because the dental clinic and the medical clinic will share a waiting room that will be added along the east end of the structure.

If all goes as planned, Strietzel will start paying the district $1,000 monthly on April 1; his lease is renewable for two five-year terms.

Plans for remodeling are ready to go forward, pending details to be decided at a meeting in Pagosa Springs this week between representatives of the MHCD and Valley-Wide Health Services, Inc., which has applied for a federal grant to operate the medical clinic.

Architect Charles A. Hubbard, in a schedule submitted with the preliminary drawings for the renovation, hopes to have construction documents completed for the medical clinic by the end of February and open bids in late March.

The major change to the clinic will be its reorientation to the south, facing Boyle Park; the entry door has always been on the north side, facing U.S. Highway 160.

The carport on the south side will be filled in and a waiting room for both clinics will be added along the east wall. There will also be an emergency access at the middle of the south side of the building.

Inside, the renovation will produce an accessible building with six examination rooms, laboratory for blood and other tests, storage area for pharmacy materials, nurses’ station, medical-records room, emergency-procedures room, office space and break room.

Funding for the renovation is being provided by grants from the Caring for Colorado Foundation ($200,000) and the Colorado Department of Local Affairs ($65,000).

Sue McWilliams, of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Rural Development Program, has been instrumental in arranging a loan package to enable the MHCD to purchase the clinic.