FORT WORTH, Texas — Fort Worth leaders broke ground Tuesday on a comprehensive wellness clinic that will serve the Las Vegas Trail neighborhood, currently a health care desert.
The two-story, 40,000 square-foot facility should open in 2025. The complex will host primary care offices, a food bank with a demonstration kitchen, a job training center and a police substation.
City leaders say the facility will change lives, particularly of families that must now travel miles to see a doctor.
"This is a catalyst for change," Fort Worth City Councilmember Michael Crain said. "It really will change the trajectory of the Las Vegas Trail community."
Workers will build the facility on 3.7 acres of donated land at the corner of Calmont Avenue and Cherry Lane. For decades, nearby residents have had to travel miles away to see a primary care physician.
"They have to travel by private car or they have to use public transportation," Cook Children's Senior VP of Health Education Chris Pedigo said. "They have to visit our emergency department and our urgent care centers for the type of care that could be managed at a medical home."
Las Vegas Trail developed around Carswell Air Force Base, where military families went for basic health care services.
"Anybody that needed assistance went to the base for assistance," LVTRise Executive Director Paige Charbonnet said. "When this community was developed, the normal, typical infrastructure was not here."
Carswell closed in 1994, leaving the area without doctors, pharmacists, and grocers. Today, Fort Worth considers the neighborhood economically "distressed."
"This clinic has been needed for a really long time," said Charbonnet.
JPS Health Network and Cook Children's will each operate from the facility, a first-of-its-kind partnership between the public and private hospitals. The agreement allows doctors to pass along pediatric patients to primary care physicians without forcing them to a new clinic.
"It's an opportunity to really take care of a family from start to finish," Pedigo said. "The goal is to have a healthy, vibrant, active community."