Chickaloon clinic aims for 2015 completion

WASILLA — Bolstered by more than $1 million in grants, publicly supported financing, and land contributions, a Sutton clinic aims to open by year’s end.

Officials with the Southcentral Foundation, the Chickaloon Village Traditional Council and the Mat-Su Health Foundation discussed their plans Friday for the estimated $4.9-million health and wellness center.

The facility, named “Ahtnahwt’aene’ Naydini’aa den”, or Athna Chickaloon People Place, in the Athabascan language, will be constructed on 10 acres of organization land along the Glenn Highway. The groundbreaking is set for April 9, and will mark the beginning of the end of what may ultimately be a 12-year effort to establish, certify, and house a clinic in rural areas along the Glenn Highway outside of Palmer.

The organizations behind the facility are eager to begin, said Southcentral Foundation vice president of medical services Doug Eby.

“The site’s already prepared,” he said. “We’re breaking ground as soon as we can physically break ground. We hope to be in the building by the end of the calendar year.”

The most recent portion of the funding is $525,000 each from the Rasmuson Foundation and the Mat-Su Valley Health Foundation, officials said.

While the clinic hasn’t received public funds, it has taken advantage of roughly $9.5 million in special municipal bonds issued by the city of Wasilla in exchange for a finder’s fee (a portion of the funding also refinanced another Southcentral building), officials said. The bonds, which can only be issued by a local government, have longer terms of payment, allowing the Foundation and the Council to spend more money on services in the short-term, Eby said.

The clinic currently provides essential medical services out of the basement of a traditional-council owned building, Eby said.

“They’ve loaned us their basement until this can happen, then they need it back,” he said “Staffing will be the staffing we already have. You’re supposed to grow it, and we hope to grow it using private revenues.”

He said the new facility will have much more to offer.

“The core is a medical facility with exam rooms, an x-ray and that kind of stuff,” he said. “As part of the building, there’s a wellness fitness area so they can do aerobics and fitness and yoga and all that kind of stuff, it’s included, and then the tribal offices for the more social and community based activities are in there, too. So core medical services, additional health and wellness, and community outreach is all from this one building.”

Funding for those additional services will likely come from a combination of community contributions, grants, and other sources. The clinic also aims to expand their customer base through traditional business means, Eby said.

If the center provides for well-heeled individuals, those with better insurance, and the economically disadvantaged, the clinic clientele can cover the whole service area, which ranges from the outskirts of Palmer all the way to Glacier View, officials said.

“What we don’t want is for this to be the poor folks’ clinic,” Eby said. “We want this to be the everybody clinic.”

Those auxiliary services include a washing machine and dryer for home-bound elders that may not have regular access to those facilities, said Lisa Wade, health services director for the council. The council is working on obtaining feedback and input, as well as landscaping and providing equipment, Wade said.

“It was very important for us to have this be a community project, to get as much input as possible from the community,” she said.

Work on a potential facility has been underway since 2003, Wade added.

The clinic joins the Talkeetna Sunshine Clinic and Mat Su Health Services as the three federally qualified health centers in the Valley. Such centers can charge on a sliding scale and perform other forms of publicly focused healthcare, said health foundation executive director Elizabeth Ripley. Federal officials were unwilling to grant the health center designation for three separate facilities in the borough in part because of a misunderstanding about the borough’s size, which was originally thought to be on par with a lower-48 county and not, as is actually the case, bigger than many lower-48 states, Ripley said.

“It’s incredibly exciting, that that last very important piece of the puzzle was put into place through extraordinary effort through Lisa Wade and the tribe at Chickaloon,” she said.

Contact Brian O’Connor at 352-2269 or brian.oconnor@frontiersman.com, or on Twitter @reporterbriano.