Closing in on the final phase of a project begun four years ago, architects and board members of a local charity medical clinic will meet Monday night to begin shaping a new life for the former Martindale Clinic building.

The 6:30 p.m. meeting in the city board room at Hope City Hall is open to the public.
“I would say the cleanup is complete,” Hope City Manager Catherine Cook said Friday. “We’re in the process of doing the certifications for that, but, basically we do have permission to go on from there.”

The building had been unusable under the federal “brownfields” doctrine as applied by the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality, and was the subject of an extensive environmental and medical cleanup, the latest of which dealt with the removal of lead-based paint and asbetos ceiling tiles.

Hundreds of containers of unused medical supplies and other medically-related materials were removed from the building some four years ago as the City began an effort to help the Hope Charitable Christian Medical Clinc obtain a permanent home.

Cook said that roofing, HVAC, electrical, and plumbing work remains to be done with some $185,000 left from an original state grant of $200,000.
“We hope to use the money as effectively as we can,” Cook said.
After that, it will be up to the HCCMC governing board to devise a plan for finishing the project. But, Cook said the City will not walk away at that point.
The City board established completion of the project as one of its goals for this year last December.

“I think we will work together to get this complete,” she said. “It’s going to be the City’s building all the way. We want to see it through to fruition, and I would anticipate it continuing to be a close partnership through their move into the building.”
The Monday night meeting with architects Glen Davis and Mark Bailey, of Texarkana, will give both the City and the HCCMC board a context from which to plan.
“They’ll see what they can do to make it work based on the fact that it was a medical clinic,” Cook said.