WALLOWA — For the first time in a decade, residents of Wallowa will have access to a full-service medical clinic in their hometown.

Wallowa Memorial Hospital and Clinics has purchased the building at 701 W. Highway 82 in Wallowa — formerly the home of Fox Archery — and will convert it into Wallowa Memorial Medical Clinic — Wallowa, which it hopes to have fully operational by early 2022.

“The people of Wallowa deserve to have a premier clinic that does not require an hour round-trip trek to garner health care services,” WMH CEO Larry Davy said in a press release. “We have received numerous requests to build in Wallowa over the past 10 years, and we have been looking for the perfect location for quite some time.”

WMH recently purchased the former Olive Branch Family Health Clinic in Wallowa, but has a need for more space.

“It’s a very small one-room space, so we’re not able to have more than one provider,” Wallowa Memorial Communications Director Brooke Pace told the Chieftain. “It makes it very limited — the number of patients we can see in that facility. This will allow us to have multiple providers, be open more days a week, and provide the primary care needs the community of Wallowa needs.”

In addition to being more-frequently open — the new clinic will be open five days a week — Pace said part of what defines the new clinic as a full-service location is “we will also have behavioral health services more regularly available, increased vaccine capability, and we are also exploring ways to provide pharmacy services to the area.”

In the press release, both Davy and Ron Fox, the former owner of the archery business that once called that building home, cited the added travel as one of the detriments of not having a clinic in town.

“We have a lot of elderly folks here and sometimes it is hard for them to get a ride in to see their doctor,” Fox said. “In emergency situations, it can take an hour or so to get into Enterprise. “My family has had to use the hospital several times and it sure would have been nice to have a clinic close.”

Pace pointed to the building’s accessibility, space for parking and the ability to add on at a later date as what appealed to Wallowa Memorial about the location.

Pace said it’s too early to tell what modifications will need to be made to the building or how much room it will have.

“We’re still in the design phases to see how many exam rooms we will be able to put there,” she said. “We just started working with the architect last week.”

The building is 3,250 square feet, and was purchased for $175,000, Pace said. She added that an evaluation is being done on the building to see if the size will be enough or if there will be a need for immediate expansion. The amount approved for purchase and remodel of the building was $1.1 million, Pace said.

Once the new building is up and running, the current location Wallowa Memorial Clinic is operating temporarily out of will be closed.

“It’s just a leased space within an existing building,” Pace said. “Sometime in August (we’ll) be transferring over to office hours five days a week at the current location in preparation of opening the new clinic.”

A more precise opening date for the clinic will be known hopefully “in a month or so,” Pace said.

“It is our mission to provide premier care to the residents of Wallowa County,” Davy said. “A professional clinic in Wallowa is the next piece in delivering on that mission.”

Editor’s note: This story has been updated.