By Jean Sealey
Northeast Florida Builders Association
41 West Duval Street was once the Paulus Music Building. Today it is a medical clinic for Jacksonville’s working uninsured and underinsured.
Members of the Northeast Florida Builders Association played a major role in the transformation.
Dr. James Burt, co-medical director and a retired urologist, planned to volunteer in some capacity. But then he met Dorothy Dorion, a retired nurse just back from Hilton Head Island where she had learned about a volunteer effort established there to provide quality healthcare to working people who could not afford health insurance.
Hilton Head-based Volunteers in Medicine inspired Dorion and Burt, who determined to open a Volunteers in Medicine clinic in Jacksonville.
“An estimated 120,000 Jacksonville workers have no health insurance,” Burt said. “There are programs to help the unemployed, the disabled, the elderly, but the people we serve generally fall outside the guidelines for help from other sources.”
Burt anticipates VIM-Jacksonville will provide services to 10,000 to 12,500 patients annually when fully operational.
“We are leasing the building from the Salvation Army for $1 a year,” Burt said. “The price was right, but the building needed a lot of work.”
That’s where NEFBA member and president of Jaguar Builders West Westmoreland entered the picture.
“I got a call from an old friend I hadn’t heard from in a long time,” Westmoreland said. “He told me he needed to turn a building into a clinic and asked if I would help.”
Westmoreland’s friend is Rev. Gene Zimmerman. The two men had met in a hospital room 20 years ago. Westmoreland, severely injured in a motorcycle accident, spent seven months in hospitals and rehabilitation. Zimmerman was a frequent visitor. Westmoreland often told Zimmerman, then pastor at the Southside United Methodist Church, he knew there was a reason God had let him live.
In 2002, Zimmerman told him why.
“When he put it like that, I was hooked,” Westmoreland said. “So, I started making some calls, too. I went to everyone I knew.”
Jaguar Builders was the general contractor on the project, and the first task was to gut the building.
Built in the 1940s, the structure needed new everything.
Westmoreland’s calls paid off.
Esposito Architects drew up preliminary and final plans.
Barry Parker Plumbing and Ace Plumbing contributed fixtures and services.
United Electrical provided a new electrical system.
Joe Turner Roofing put on a new roof.
JTE and B&B drywall companies helped demolish the old and frame the new.
Lumber Unlimited and Quality Hardware contributed lumber, doors and door hardware.
Westmoreland obtained permits in May and the clinic doors opened Sept. 12, 2003.
“A lot of people worked on this project,” said Westmoreland, who served on the Mayor’s Disability Council from 1994-2003. “We have tried to help whenever we can, but this was a big project and were fortunate to have so much help.”
Westmoreland credits Kim Sutton, an interior designer with Rink Reynolds Diamond Fisher Wilson, with the final look of the clinic.
“We provided the framework,” he said. “She made it look good.”
The design element Sutton added is more than just cosmetic, Burt said.
“When you walk in the door of this clinic, you know you are in a professional medical setting,” Burt said. “Much of that has to do with Kim’s vision for the clinic and then her untiring efforts in enlisting the help of others to make it happen.”
The clinic recognized Sutton’s efforts by naming her Volunteer of the Year.
Sutton, like Westmoreland, called on many of her associates and customers.
“I have become more aware of the need for a facility to provide medical services,” Sutton said. “Many of the subcontractors who work on our jobs don’t have adequate healthcare. And, I felt it was extremely important to establish a professional tone in the clinic environment. It shows people who come in for service that they are respected and deserving of high-quality treatment.”
Westmoreland also said many of the construction workers, trades and crafts people who transformed the clinic would qualify as patients there.
“Many of our subcontractors are small businesses and can’t provide their employees with adequate healthcare,” he said. “Those are the very people this clinic will serve.”
Burt estimates about 75 percent of the people who donated time to build the clinic would meet the clinic’s guidelines. An individual working and making between $13,000 and $23,000 per year, depending on the number of dependents in the family, and with no other access to medical care qualifies for the program.
Sutton said she knew the clinic had achieved the goal of creating a dignified, professional clinic when she was talking to Mayor John Peyton at the grand opening.
“I was pleased that he seemed to appreciate the environment we had worked to create in the clinic,” she said. “But when he told me that the clinic was nicer than his doctor’s office, I missed my chance to tell him to send his doctor here as a volunteer.”