The People’s Health Clinic is getting 3,000 more square feet to provide free care to those in need.
The nonprofit's leaders had grappled with Summit County leadership over extra space at the county health department’s Round Valley headquarters this summer.
Space is freeing up at the building since health department administrators are moving to the new PEAK Center in Kimball Junction.
“All of our clinical services, environmental health services, emergency management and preparedness are all staying at the [Round Valley] building, and we’re moving everybody up into a consolidated space,” Health director Phil Bondurant told KPCW. “Then People’s Health Clinic is going to occupy some of the space that is vacated to meet their needs and demands.”
The People’s Health Clinic had to fight for that space while Summit County juggled requests from multiple service providers.
The county had considered allocating it for mental healthcare because two providers will be displaced when the Sheldon Richins Building is bulldozed for redevelopment in Kimball Junction.
Now, Bondurant says the mental health services will be headquartered at the Mountain Regional Water building near Old Highway 40.
That has allowed People’s Health to expand, and Executive Director Mairi Leining said “the timing couldn’t be better.”
The nonprofit currently occupies 5,000 square feet; the county’s lease with Intermountain Health allows the nonprofit up to 12,500 square feet.
“We’re literally sitting on top of each other, and there are thousands of people in our community who need us,” Leining said. “We are getting a little over 3,000 extra square feet, which is going to let us put our volunteer providers to work who want more hours, and we even have a waiting list of volunteer physicians waiting to start.”
The other nonprofit the county considered putting in that space was Jacky’s Recovery Support Services, a smaller, peer-to-peer mental health organization run by and for Latinos. It had a lease at the Richins Building through 2030.
Executive Director Javier Alegre told KPCW in September that his organization expanded to Summit County four years ago to fill a gap in Spanish-language services.
He considers People’s Health Clinic an “excellent partner.”
“No matter what happens after this, no matter where we go, no matter where everybody ends up, our collaboration will not change,” he said on KPCW’s “Local News Hour” Sept. 28. “What's important to us is the people that we are serving.”
Jacky’s will move to the water district offices out in the Snyderville Basin alongside the Wasatch Back’s Mobile Crisis Outreach Team.
MCOT responds to mental health crises alongside or in lieu of police. As of June, it’s now available 24/7.
The reshuffling won’t be immediate since the various parties involved have yet to sign new leases. Leining expects People’s Health to be able to begin remodeling its new space next May.
Summit County is a financial supporter of KPCW.
