Construction is scheduled to start within the next month on a new medical facility in the village of Honeoye Falls that officials said is much needed in that area.
The 10,000-square-foot space will provide family medicine and urgent care services under the operation of Canandaigua’s F.F. Thompson Hospital, part of the UR Medicine network.
“The largest deficit of primary care is in the Honeoye ZIP code,” said Kurt Koczent, chief operating officer of Thompson Health. “The closest urgent care is in Henrietta, and it's about a 20-minute drive. ... This is exactly what a community hospital should be doing.”
This will be the village’s first urgent care center with extended hours, walk-in treatments, and on-site diagnostic services. The address will be 20 North St., which was once a restaurant and has since been abandoned.
But the project is not without controversy.
Developer Pike Construction is seeking tax breaks and incentives valued at $750,000, or 21% of the estimated $3.6 million project cost — which the company has argued is necessary to offset construction cost inflation. Criticism during an hour-and-a-half-long public hearing last week focused on the veracity of those claims of financial need, and on the tax breaks, specifically a 14-year property tax abatement on the facility.
If the property were transferred to F.F. Thompson, the hospital is a nonprofit and the property would be fully exempt. The facility is expected to employ 26 full-time staffers.
Among those voicing concerns during the public hearing was village resident Cara Briggs.
“This is a very small town and a very small village absorbing the cost of something that is benefitting an area much larger than us, and bringing increased traffic, et cetera, in a town that has one stoplight. And we like that, by the way. One stoplight. Little traffic,” said Briggs, a local attorney who also serves as town justice for the town of Mendon, which encompasses Honeoye Falls.
“There’s a huge divide of opinion on whether an urgent care is really needed here,” she continued. “I’m not going to get into that. But a lot of people are not happy .... And, yeah, there’s a benefit, countywide in the outlying counties, but the burden lands on us and it is disproportionate and that is of grave concern to all of us.”
The proposal also comes at a time when the area is experiencing considerable growth. The village also is grappling with community concern over a proposed subdivision that would add 242 single-family houses and 170 apartments.
Koczent noted the area growth and said the institution “wants to be able to service that community.”
According to the New York Health Foundation's Care Across Communities Dashboard, about 24% of the residents in the Honeoye Falls area do not have a primary care provider. That compares to 8% for Monroe County; 14% statewide. Koczent said this new center will help keep people out of the emergency room, which he said is already strained.
“Every hospital, including our own, have longer wait times than we want in the emergency department,” Koczent said. “The more we can take care of people in urgent care or in primary care, that's what we're really trying to focus on.”
The community hospital sought consultation from the Simon Business School to identify the next best place to set up these services.
The new medical facility is scheduled to open on Oct. 1, 2027.
