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Klobucar gives Beloit center some breathing room
It’s really no big deal. It’s just a blip on the blueprint. But when Klobucar Construction changes the unisex bathroom to separate male and female restrooms, it’ll mean the world to the staff of the Beloit Area Community Health Center, which provides primary-care services to uninsured and underinsured people in Beloit. “We won’t have to argue over who’s putting the toilet seat up and who’s not,” said Sharon Rand, the center’s COO and CFO. Important as it might be, the bathroom work is really just a small portion of a renovation and expansion of the center in the mostly vacant Beloit Mall. Klobucar is tackling the project in two concurrent phases, and the Beloit contractor is doing it quietly. “We’re trying to minimize the disruption for the owner,” said Jim Klobucar, the contractor’s vice president and project manager. “We usually come in early in the morning to get a jump and try to do the noisy things in the off-hours the best we can.” The first phase calls for a 2,400-square-foot expansion into an adjacent area of the mall. The new space will make room for the center’s behavioral health/social services program and offer the group a separate entrance for evening meetings. The second phase involves renovating the 2,700 square feet of the behavioral health/social services program’s old space to increase the number of dental-treatment rooms from three to 11, Klobucar said. It’s not the first time the contractor did dental work for the center.
“Two years ago, we went in and remodeled a small space for a lab and three dental offices,” he said. “The dental services have gone hog wild.” That’s not an overstatement. The addition of dental space, Rand said, meets a key need. “We’re still turning away 200-plus dental patients a month,” she said. “Maybe with this we’ll only turn away 150.” Each phase of the project required some demo work, and, for the dental areas, Klobucar Construction needed to cut floor space for air, vacuum, sewer and electrical lines. But the project is right on schedule. “We’re moving right along, and, based on what we’ve been telling them for the dental area, we’re at or ahead of what we had set up,” Klobucar said. Rand said the project marks the third time Klobucar Construction stepped in to make improvements at the center, and she’s just as happy now as she was with the previous jobs. “Jim Klobucar has been so good to us and great to work with,” she said. “We always look to him for every project.” Project Fact:Years ago, Klobucar completed an expansion and renovation at Beloit Mall for the Elder-Beerman department store, which is now the only remaining store in the mall. Project Essentials:Project Name: Beloit Area Community Health Center |
