An open house was held March 25 to kick off the redevelopment of the former Shop ‘n Save property at 200 North Grand Ave. West. In November, Advanced Medical Transport of Springfield, the parent company of Medics First, purchased the building to serve as the new headquarters for the nonprofit ambulance company. In addition, a portion of the building will be leased to Memorial Health.
“We identified an opportunity to relocate our primary headquarters to be more centrally located within the community and be in close proximity to our friends in both health care systems,” said Greg Chance, CEO of Medics First told SBJ in December. “We looked at other properties, but tried to target the Medical District.”
In 2019, Medics First was purchased by Advanced Medical Transport, a nationally accredited regional Emergency Medical Services provider, becoming Springfield’s first nonprofit ambulance service. The company is currently headquartered at 1600 Taylor Ave.
“This represents an opportunity to improve our performance in terms of response times,” said Chance, noting that the additional space would also “provide greater comfort to our crews when they are in the building.” In addition, the building will house the company’s fleet of vehicles and Chance noted, “We need a large garage space to park our ambulances out of the elements and do our own maintenance.”
Memorial Health has confirmed that the organization will be leasing approximately 10,000 square feet of space in the building for “future workforce development programs,” according to a written statement from a hospital spokesperson.
Farnsworth Group has been retained as the project architect and O’Shea Builders is the general contractor. Chance said that the city has issued building permits and construction is ready to begin. In lieu of a groundbreaking, representatives at the open house took turns swinging a sledgehammer at a wall.
Chance said that Medics First is excited about being part of the urban renewal efforts in Ward 5 and noted that Ward 5 Ald. Lakeisha Purchase has already been instrumental in getting the project off the ground. “She helped us manage this effort, working through a number of initial hurdles,” he said.
“Being a nonprofit, we embrace what that means in the community. We look forward to working with our new neighborhood to see what else we can do in terms of giving back.”
