ELKINS — The CEO of WVU Medicine United Hospital Center said construction on the company’s planned $37 million facility in Elkins should begin in June, and officials hope for an opening before the end of 2025.

“We’re incredibly excited to add Elkins as one of our sites,” Dr. David Hess, M.D., the president and chief executive officer of United Hospital Center, told The Inter-Mountain Thursday afternoon.

“We’ve heard from the community for a while, ‘We want more United Hospital Center. We want more WVU Medicine.’ So we’ve been working on the business plan for a while. We’re excited that our local system board believed in the vision and wanted us to do the project.”

Hess, a native of Lumberport, said construction on the project will begin this summer.

“We already have the construction documents ready, and it’s going to go out to bid here very soon,” he said. “We expect that the construction will start in June. We’re tentatively shooting for late fall of 2025 (to open), depending on construction delays. We’re going to push hard to open up by the end of ’25.”

The 38,000-square-foot facility will bring new jobs to the area, Hess said.

“We’re going to lease part of the space to another healthcare entity. Initially, just for us, we’re going to have nearly 30 people there, just to start out,” he said. “Certainly, if there’s growth and expansion, that will add. But initially, those will be 30 new jobs for the area.”

Hess said the determination of what other entity will have space in the building is “still in discussions.”

“We’ve had clinics in that area for a long time,” he said of Randolph County. “Every clinic, we would hear from patients how we should open up more down there, and that they want more WVU Medicine specialists down there. United Hospital Center has had a long-standing history in Randolph County, and Elkins specifically. We get a lot of patients who come up to Bridgeport from that market. Our mission is to put care as close to home as we can.

“It just makes sense to put a large care point for the entire system in Elkins. We have some specialty care that’s going to go there. We have rheumatologists, and pulmonologists, and cancer care. It will just be a full spectrum.”

Hess said the new facility will offer many healthcare services, but will not be a full hospital.

“We’re terming this ‘a hospital without beds,'” he said. “It won’t be a true hospital, but we will offer and mirror a lot of services that we offer on our campus here in Bridgeport. We’ll have a physician there seven days a week, ready to see patients, and an Urgent Care. We’ll have heavy Primary Care there.

“A lot of times people just need a CAT scan done or an MRI done or they need an X-ray, or labs. We’re going to have all that on site. We really want to make this as comprehensive as possible. We want a one-stop shop for everybody in Randolph and surrounding counties.”

Elkins is a convenient location for residents of many local communities, Hess said.

“Elkins is already that regional hub for a lot of people. I’ve met with local leaders there. I’ve met with county leaders there, and they have a very growth-minded vision for that area,” he said. “They’re trying to bring in economic development. We love working with leadership that has that growth mindset, because we’re of that mindset as well.

“We felt very welcomed. We try to invigorate communities, and do everything we can to be woven into the fabric of communities,” Hess noted.

“We are very excited to be one of the first buildings that you’ll see coming off of Corridor H into Elkins. It will be a beautiful facility that the community will be proud of, and we think it’s going to be a pillar there.”

The site for the planned facility is located on North Randolph Avenue/U.S. Route 219, next to the state Division of Motor Vehicles building.

The property, which contains 6.91 acres, was purchased in July 2023 for $1,650,000. The Inter-Mountain obtained information about the transaction through a property transfer on file at the Randolph County Clerk’s office.

Last year, the land was cleared of several of the structures on the property, including the former showroom and garage building for Teter Motors.

Teter Motors originally opened in Elkins in 1944 and had two locations — on Davis Avenue across from Ginos, and on the Beverly Five-Lane, where Newlon’s Trucking is now located.

The Davis Avenue location collapsed during a storm in 1968, and the business was then moved to the North Randolph Avenue property.

United Hospital Center joined with West Virginia University Hospitals in 1997 to form the West Virginia United Health Systems. UHC employs more than 2,500 employees and is a member of WVU Medicine