After 17 months of construction, the Arthur Center Community Health Clinic is finally open for business.

The medical facility had its first day of operation on March 21, seven months past its target date of completion. It was temporarily operated out of a construction trailer before construction on the new building was done.

“It’s a whole lot better than the triple wide temporary location that we had there,” Arthur Center CEO Terry Mackey said. “I’m glad that we can do that so people don’t have to drive all the way to Mexico to get healthcare. It was basically a glorified construction trailer, so it’s good to be a real building now.”

The $4.5-million facility is located at 1225 Aguilar Drive in Montgomery City, off Highway 19. Plans are being made for an open house in either late April or early May.

“We thought that location was great,” Mackey said. “We obviously bought it from the City of Montgomery. We felt really good about that location. I guess there could have been better locations if people could have walked easier to it. But in terms of visibility, it has really good visibility for the community.”

The clinic is open from 8 a.m.-6 p.m. Monday through Friday for primary care and 8 a.m.-6 p.m. on Thursdays for behavioral health. Its staff includes Dr. Eric Kondro, family nurse practitioner Carolyn Canterbury and psychiatric nurse practitioner Victoria Sanford.

Mackey said the clinic is still looking for a dentist.

“Hopefully, we can come to some kind of terms with him and open up dentistry in Montgomery that will be better equipped to serve low income and folks who have Medicaid,” Mackey said. “There are other dentists, but if they take Medicaid, they probably take only a few patients whereas we have a cost-based reimbursement with Medicaid so at least we get a little bit over 90 percent of our costs reimbursed.”

Construction on the facility began in October 2022. The project was originally scheduled to be finished by August 2023 before plans got changed.

“It’s been the most challenging building project we had,” Mackey said.

The CEO said the facility had some drywall issues, which led to the delay of the completion of the project.

“They didn’t do the job well and they had to literally skim coat the entire interior of the building all on drywall and refinish it,” he said. “They used the same equipment, but guess what? They got the same results. So they had to skim coat the entire building once again and finish it again.”

The new facility has six exam rooms and five dental laboratories. Mackey said the next mission is to add more staff members.

“Once you get something built, you can start recruiting people,” he said. “We look to maybe add another nurse practitioner for primary care. Then, we would like to add a therapist and a psychologist at least, if not two, to that location. Hopefully, within the next year, we’ll try to get those people in place and see where it goes from there.”

Arthur Center Community Health is a health center that is based in Mexico. Named after J.B. Arthur in 1992, the Arthur Center has over 1,400 organizations across the country.