The Morgan County Health Department is looking to move into its new location this Spring.
Morgan County Health Department Administrator Dale Bainter says they have tentatively selected May 1st as their first day in their new location at the former Putnam-Springer Art building located at the corner of North Clay and East State.
Bainter says that the move and renovations of the site has undergone some delays: “Of course the supply chain issues being what they are, we are dealing with that ourselves…but the building itself is coming along nicely and we will be very excited to move into more than double the square footage and be able to serve our community in a more efficient manner than serving through the pandemic in our current location.”
Morgan County Commissioner Chair Brad Zeller says that federal American Rescue Plan funding has helped make the move a reality: “We’ve been able to put that new money into our new health facility, which is going to be a state-of-the-art facility in the city and will represent the whole county. We are really looking forward to getting that building open and up and running. They’ve run into some supply issues. We were hoping to having it open in January, but it will look like it will be March before that building is open.”
Bainter says they had hoped to be in the building by now, but the delays in materials had backed everything up. Bainter says he’s excited to more than double the health department’s square footage, by adding more storage space, waiting room space, and exam rooms.
Bainter says it will also eliminate the need to store things at multiple locations throughout the community: “We have a couple of storage sites that we use – small storage facilities. We hope to bring all of that in house, which once again, will make us more efficient in cost, more efficient in not having to go off-site to get our location. We have things poked away in multiple places around the community, and that’s always a little bit difficult as we are running our vaccine clinics. We always had to start a day or two in advance just to make sure we could round up all that equipment and put it in place and be up and running. While our teams was very efficient at it, it will be wonderful to have everything under one roof.”
The Health Department, which has had space at a premium for some time, has been at the former Bill’s Star Market location at 345 West State Street since the 1980s.