This supermarket space remains vacant, but across the parking lot, a medical clinic is planned.
One day soon it may be easier for North Albany residents with kidney disease to get their blood cleansed than to shop for groceries close to home. Ray’s Food Store in the North Albany Village shopping center closed in January 2014, and still there is no imminent prospect for a replacement supermarket. But across the parking lot of the shopping center, a company based in Texas is planning construct a 13,000-square foot dialysis clinic.
The Albany Planning Division has been reviewing an application for the dialysis project submitted by Morris+Nelson, a firm from Costa Mesa, Calif., that has coordinated medical projects in Southern California and dialysis centers all over the country. The North Albany clinic will be owned by PCI HealthDev, formerly known as Physicians Capital Investment, of Dallas, according to the application filed in December 2014.
The Planning Division has been waiting for additional information to make the application complete. “We expect that information soon and then we can complete the staff review and issue a notice of decision,” Planner Melissa Anderson says in an email.
This addition to North Albany Village will be on the east side of the complex, between the existing Corvallis Clinic building and a row of storefronts to the north. Site plan approval is required because the project alters the approved layout and parking plan for the shopping center. No word when construction is expected to start or be completed.
Why a dialysis center in North Albany? Perhaps because it will be within a couple of minutes of Bonaventure Senior Living, the 144-unit complex being completed off the west end of Hickory Street.
Meanwhile on the grocery front, there’s no news. “We have hit a slowdown in the discussions and vague talks about when the next steps will be taken,” says Pete Snook, development director at Deacon Corp., the shopping center’s developer. So for North Albany households, grocery trips will continue to mean driving across town. (hh)
“So for North Albany households, grocery trips will continue to mean driving across town.”
As they have been for many years if you live in the area once serviced by the old Safeway…