MCMC to celebrate new HR outpatient clinic expansion

Like MCMC’s Water’s Edge facility in The Dalles, Nichols Landing provides specialty medical services to MCMC clients.

MCMC primarily operates out of The Dalles, with multiple established sites at Second, 12th and 19th Streets, and a specialty care facility, Water’s Edge, on Lone Pine Boulevard, but serves a large clientele in Hood River.

MCMC has offered specialty services in Hood River for some time, said MCMC Community Outreach Coordinator Stephanie Bowen, but Nichols Landing is the center’s first full-fledged facility outside of The Dalles. “(We’re) just trying to consolidate our services in one building and better serve the Hood River market,” she said, “We were limited on space, it’s just easier to have a centralized location for all of our services.”

MCMC Outpatient Therapy, formerly Hood River Therapy, relocated to Nichols Landing in February 2018 and provides physical and occupational therapy, as well as speech language pathology, out of six private treatment rooms and a large performance and rehabilitation gym at the facility. Gorge Urology opened in Nichols Landing in May, relocating from a building near Providence Hood River Memorial Hospital.

Nichols Basin is also being used to expand MCMC’s services in the Hood River area, Bowen said.

A new MCMC Cardiology department opened in May and Dermatology and MCMC Sports Medicine & Orthopedic Surgery departments are expected to open at Nichols Basin in mid-July; and more services could be coming.

“We are excited to serve our Hood River patients by expanding and consolidating services on the beautiful waterfront,” said MCMC President and CEO Dennis Knox in a February edition of “WellAware,” an MCMC publication. “As hospitals around the country close their doors or shrink services, Mid-Columbia Medical Center has worked hard to cut costs without cutting services to patients.”

Initial construction on the site, owned by Portland-based firm Naito Development LLC, began in late 2016 and while some of the first floor is still a work in progress, the second and third floors are finished and operational.

The medical center is leasing about 60 percent of the Nichols Building, a three-story, 12,500 square-foot facility on a commercial-zoned property overlooking Nichols Basin, next to the Hampton Inn and just off I-84.

About 1,000 square feet of the Nichols Building is still available on the ground floor, said Naito Development Principal Bob Naito.

The rest of the building is occupied by two offices on the third floor, an internal medicine specialists on the second floor, and a restaurant and retail space on the ground floor.