by Chris Bavender
Clay Terrace will soon have a new tenant – St.Vincent Sports Performance will make the move to the Hamilton County retail center by summer’s end.
It’s a move that made sense to the organization.
“With our growth and the diversity of our program and offerings – and also with the advent of the number of high schools we provide athletic training services to – as well as the work we do with St.Vincent Carmel and Fishers’ Hospitals, we were looking for a Hamilton County location,” said Ralph Reiff, SVSP executive director. “Clay Terrace became an option and worked out to be something we felt would be a good fit for us.”
SVSP will maintain its primary facility on West 86th Street while closing its East Side sports performance office and West Carmel Drive physician’s practice, and merging the two into the 26,000-square-foot Clay Terrace location. The new office, to be located in the space formerly occupied by Circuit City, will be home to 10 staff members, including two doctors.
Reiff believes the high visibility and easy accessibility of the new office will be beneficial.
“We get a lot of customers from north of Hamilton County, so this gives us access into Boone County and out to the Geist area so it is the center of the universe really for us as far as providing services,” Reiff said. “And, we can’t discount our partner schools such as Carmel Clay Schools, Zionsville, Sheridan, etc. – our services will now be closer to them.”
There was never any hesitation about a move to a retail center.
“Not for a minute. We are really a retail business within a hospital model. You can walk in without any sort of referral or prescription,” he said. “We think as people park their cars and go to other various stores, we will fit right into that. We find right now that our clientele will spend time at Traders Point Mall and drive back and forth from our facility. Now, they can park the car and walk and do their shopping, which we think will be an attractive setting for our clientele”
The new facility will continue to offer all the current services.
“It will be a different configuration of space to allow us to basically make it more efficient for our associates so we can provide services in a more efficient manner,” Reiff said. “There won’t be anything brand new or cutting-edge that we don’t already have – just a ‘smarter’ space.”
Reiff estimates the move won’t take place until Labor Day. The Lawrence Township and West Carmel Drive locations will remain open until the new space is ready.