UAB Medical West plans new clinic in Trace Crossings

The UAB Medical West hospital in Bessemer plans to open a new clinic in a new office building in The Village at Brock’s Gap shopping center in the Trace Crossings community.

The clinic will take up about 5,500 square feet of an 11,000-square-foot building under construction along Stadium Trace Parkway. The building is owned by the developers of the shopping center: Altera Development and eds-America, which is managing the center. UAB Medical West is leasing the space.

The hospital plans to have room for four medical providers there, including at least three primary care physicians, said Medical West CEO Keith Pennington. The fourth provider could be another primary care physician, or it may be some type of specialist.

The hospital likely won’t identify the doctors going into The Village at Brock’s Gap until July or August; however, it will not be the primary care physicians already operating in the Medical West Hoover Health Center primary care clinic that adjoins the UAB Medical West freestanding emergency department across Interstate 459, Pennington said. The doctors practicing there, Dr. Harveen Sodhi and Dr. J.D. Shugrue, will stay.

Pennington said Medical West wants to add primary care doctors in Trace Crossings because it’s such a growing area. The new clinic is not far from the Medical West freestanding emergency department and will be a good distance from the new Medical West hospital slated to be built in McCalla.

The goal is to have the new clinic up and running by September or October.

“A lot of that depends on the weather,” he said.

There already has been one month with a lot of rain that caused some delays, he said.

Eds-America is talking with other potential tenants about the rest of the space in the new office building, and it likely will be used for medical purposes, said Patrick Denney, CEO of Eds-America. UAB Medical West has first rights to the rest of the building but is not expected to take up more space, Denney said.

The rest of The Village at Brock’s Gap is mostly leased, with tenants including The Pointe Dance Arts, Keller Williams Hoover, Burn Boot Camp, EW Motion Therapy, Trak Shak, The Whole Scoop ice cream shop, CakEffect, Tre Luna Bar & Kitchen and newcomers Sugaring NYC Organic Waxing and Lash Studio, OS1 Sports Injury Clinic, Moe’s Original BBQ and Touch & Glow Nails & Spa.

There are three other vacant spaces in the part of the shopping center that is already built, Denney said. That includes a little more than 13,000 square feet that was home to the Harvest Market before it closed, a 2,400-square-foot space next to Tre Luna and a 1,288-square-foot space between Moe’s and OS1 Sports Injury Clinic.

Denney said interest in the shopping center has not slowed down, despite the COVID-19 outbreak and temporary business shutdowns.

“More and more people want to get off Main Street and get in the development [closer to homes],” he said. “We haven’t seen any slack in interest.”