Klinic’s move to Sherbrook Street facility finalized

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This article was published 10/11/2017 (2906 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

For almost a decade, Klinic has been on the hunt for a new home.

The quest was stymied first by the nearly 50-year-old community health centre’s mandate to serve a specific central Winnipeg catchment area. When it eyed the 35,000-square-foot Epic Information Solutions building on Sherbrook Street, it then became a question of finessing leases with Epic and MTS, which acquired it in 2013.

Now, the spot is theirs.

A request for proposals to renovate the building closed Thursday. If all goes well, construction will start next fall and Klinic will move in the following July. In the meantime, the not-for-profit is doing the best it can to cram its Broadway services into its Portage Avenue location.

The Broadway “mansion” is being readied for sale; the proceeds will help foot the Sherbrook bill, which will entail a $2.7-million renovation. To make matters more challenging, says Nicole Chammartin, Klinic’s executive director, since moving the Broadway drop-in counselling services over to Portage, demand has jumped 40 per cent.

“We’ve almost doubled our client capacity,” she says.

Chammartin’s best guess is that the Portage location is more accessible for people already using other Klinic services, which means the increase will likely carry over to Sherbrook.

In addition to merging the two locations and expanding operations, Klinic will also be collocating with the Sexuality Education Resource Centre of Manitoba.

“That’s really exciting,” she says, noting the two non-profits share executives, meaning Chammartin and her colleagues frequently go back and forth between the two Klinic spots and SERC, which currently operates out of 226 Osborne St. Once together, she says, “We’ll be way more efficient.”

Once the Epic building is renovated, the plan is for it to be able to comfortably accommodate upwards of 185 employees and more than 200 patient visits daily.

The building will include enough exam and interview rooms that Klinic will be able to put clients who are next in line for their appointments in a spare room to wait.

The new building will also have an Aboriginal culture room, rooms for training, group therapy and multipurpose use, as well as offices, workspaces, meeting rooms and a staff gym with showers. Chammartin is particularly looking forward to the space being equipped for key-card access.

“We feel the building will be a little more secure,” she says.

While the project is more than a year from coming to fruition, Chammartin is excited there are concrete timelines attached to it.

“It’s not like this came overnight,” she says. “It’s been a long process and it’s been very challenging for us.”

jane.gerster@freepress.mb.ca