Kootenai Medical Center Expansion Will Add Health Resource Facility

Educational and community involvement will be emphasized in Kootenai Medical Center’s new Health Resource Center.

The $1.4 million, 14,000-square-foot facility should be completed by February on vacant property north of KMC’s Transitional Care Center (its original brick building to the west of the big, blue hospital).

The single-story structure is being built through funds raised by the KMC Foundation and matched by the KMC board of directors. It will be free standing with a covered walkway to the main building.

The building will be comprised of three triangular sections of auditorium-classrooms, educational and social services offices and a child and adult day-care center.

Included will be a 6,000-square-foot auditorium, which will seat 300 people, that can be divided into five classroom spaces. These rooms will be used by health education and support groups and the nursing program of North Idaho College.

The complex also will have a medical library and audio-visual and satellite downlink capabilities.

Office spaces in a second triangle will be for KMC’s Social Services and Educational Services departments and health-related, non-profit community organizations. Personnel here help KMC employees and doctors meet certification requirements. With about 20 employees, the departments help with community outreach and provide training and space for clinical instruction.

About 60 children of KMC employees can be cared for by about six employees in the day-care unit. A new service will be adult day care, primarily for geriatric clients when a primary caregiver needs help. The concept of the child and adult day cares in adjacent units is called intergenerational, according to Don Soltman, vice president for ancillary and support services.

With more than 900 employees, KMC is the single largest employer in Kootenai County. The medical staff includes more than 120 physicians. The 187-bed, non-profit hospital has doubled since opening in 1966.

State-of-the-art cosmetic plastic surgery is the specialty of Aesthetic SurgiCare Northwest and Dr. Martin Elliott, who has remodeled and occupied the building at 1111 Ironwood Drive, Coeur d’Alene.

Two of Elliott’s specialties include CO2 laser resurfacing (for treatment of facial wrinkling due to age or environmental damage) and endoscopic plastic surgery of the upper face and forehead (face lifting).

Raised on Long Island, N.Y., Elliott was educated at Reed College in Portland, Cornell University Medical College and the University of California at Irvine. He brought his family to North Idaho from Newport Beach, Calif., after vacationing here. He became aware of North Idaho after seeing a real estate advertisement in the Los Angeles Times.

Another tenant in the building, formerly the Group Health Building, is a A Beautiful You, a skin rejuvenation center specializing in care for people with acne and sun damage. Run by Maureen Mohney, the office is the second outlet for A Beautiful You owner Joan Hankel.

Inland Imaging Radiologists and Trunkenbolz & Carlson attorneys are new tenants in the new $2 million Tomlinson-Black Realty North Idaho headquarters building in the Plaza at Ironwood complex, Coeur d’Alene.

Expanding from its Spokane and Post Falls locations, Inland Imaging has leased 4,500 square feet on the lower level. Also expanding from two offices in Spokane, Trunkenbolz & Carlson, with about five employees, leased 1,400 square feet on the first floor.

The third building in the Plaza at Ironwood (the second is the under-construction First Federal Bank of Idaho) will be a 4,200-square-foot professional office facility planned by contractor Stan Cole of San Diego.

A major tenant will be Cole’s wife, Mary Walsh-Cole, who will move her dental practice to Coeur d’Alene. Other spaces are available for lease.

Five building plots remain available in the Plaza at Ironwood, according to Tomlinson-Black agent Monty Riswald. Primary prospects include a motel and a restaurant.

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