Residents Anticipate Medical Services Back to Downtown

SAN JOSE, Ca – Though the need to have a full-service hospital in the downtown of the 11th largest city in the country is obvious, it took nearly six years of public pressure and many studies and plans to rebirth a medical center that was abruptly closed in 2004.

However, residents of San Jose still have a long wait before the downtown clinic opens due to the project’s multiple phases of development over the next year; including cleaning the site, remodeling, construction, and determining what types of services are going to be provided, among others. The construction of the new health facility could take up to 12 months.

Like coming full circle, the new clinic’s site will actually be the old site. In January of this year, the County of Santa Clara bought a 13.4-acre plot in downtown San Jose, where the original San Jose Medical Center used to be located, for $24 million.

“The main reason for acquiring the site was to look for a location in downtown San Jose to create a medical clinic,” said Gary Graves, Chief Operating Officer of Santa Clara County. “We saw an opportunity to acquire the entire site.” There are five parking lots adjacent to or near the San Jose State campus. The site has an existing 37,000 square foot medical office building, which will be remodeled to serve as a clinic.

Supervisor George Shirakawa, representative of District 2 where the property is located, said: “We plan to start the demolition between June and October.” Shirakawa added that not everything would be demolished as both the medical building located on Santa Clara Street and the historical building on site would stay.

Simultaneously, the Gardner Health Services was chosen by the County through a selection process to run the new medical facility. “Gardner will be the provider of health services and they are in the process of recommending what those needs should be,” said Graves. He emphasized: “the downtown clinic will [certainly] provide urgent care services, but it is not planning to be open 24 hours.”

Gardner Health Services is also pursuing a federal grant and developing its own operating plan to manage the future downtown hospital. “The downtown clinic will not be operated by the County, but by Gardner,” added Graves, which will be charged a nominal amount for leasing the buildings.

Thousands of downtown San Jose residents were surprised and disappointed when the former San Jose Medical Center was shut down in 2004. Now they can hope that they would have access to medical and urgent care services again without having to travel far in 2011.