A new $15 million health center is being developed on the 5.5-acre site of the former Kohala Club Hotel, located on Akoni Pule Highway.
But in addition to primary care, behavioral health, dentistry and pharmacy services, the health and wellness center will add a training facility to educate doctors, nurses, medical assistants, dentists and pharmacists.
“We’re going to try to get as many people into training as we can,” said Irene Carpenter, CEO of Hamakua-Kohala Health. “There will be more doctors, more services and more staff, so we’re creating jobs right here in Kohala.”
The group is working closely with the University of Hawaii John A. Burns School of Medicine and plans to host a residency program for its students.
“We’re going to be training the new doctors coming out of JABSOM to work in rural areas, instead of sending them to the mainland,” Carpenter said. “Because when they go there for their residency, they do not come back, and we have a shortage here.”
Hamakua-Kohala Health currently has four locations on the Big Island in Waimea, Honokaa, Laupahoehoe and Kohala. This new facility will replace the Kohala clinic in Kapaau and will inherit the current staff.
“About two years ago, we had 5,000 patients at the health center. Now we have 10,000,” Carpenter said. “And we’re in a rental space. It’s costing us a huge amount of money to rent, so instead of spending that money every month, we’re going to buy our own place, build it, and put the money back into the community.”
The parcel was purchased with donations for roughly $907,000 in 2021, according to Carpenter.
Donations are also expected to be the main source of funding for the facility’s’s construction.
“We’ve already raised about a million dollars,” Carpenter said, adding the group is looking for additional donations, grants and funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. “The faster we get them, the faster the building will be up.”
Honolulu-based WhiteSpace Architects, with an office in Waimea, was selected to draft the initial design for the two-story, 24,000-square-foot facility, which will include the clinic, student housing and a research center.
Laurel Swan, who lives in North Kohala and heads the Waimea branch of WhiteSpace Architects, will serve as the project architect.
“As with all of our work, the new design responds to what Hamakua-Kohala Health needs now, yet also looks ahead to the future,” Swan said in a press release. “We believe that we have designed a health center that will work successfully in 2025, as well as for the next century to accommodate the changing needs of this unique community.”
Two of three existing Kohala Club Hotel buildings will be demolished, and the remaining two-story building will be converted into student housing during a future phase of the project.
The facility also will offer traditional cultural healing including ho‘oponopono (a practice of forgiveness) and la‘au lapa‘au (plant medicine), as well as other cultural traditions for health.
“We have hired a traditional healing professional. They’re on full-time, and they’re offering lomi lomi (massage), and we’re going to set up a garden between the new buildings,” Carpenter said. “There will be a cultural healing center there, but people can come and pick herbs and learn about them, and we’re not trying to make money off of it, we’re just going to teach people.”
Groundbreaking for the structure is anticipated for mid-2024, with Hamakua-Kohala Health officials hoping the facility will welcome its first patients in 2025.
“We expect to actually finish the building permit process and start bulldozing and getting the road ready within the next month,” Carpenter said. “This is the project we’re doing in Kapaau, and we’re doing the same thing in Honokaa.”
Hamakua-Kohala had a health center in Honokaa, but because of its aging structure, the group opted to rebuild that facility as well.
“We’ve already raised maybe seven or eight million (dollars) for the Honokaa project,” Carpenter said. “So, we bulldozed the old building, cleaned it all up, and now we have a nice flat lot, and we’re working with an architect to draw up the plans for the building here in Honokaa.”
Email Grant Phillips at gphillips@hawaiitribune-herald.com.