The Marana Health Center is planning a party.
Construction on the center's new, 74,656-square-foot facility is nearing completion, and health center leaders will fete their new digs with an opening celebration for local dignitaries as well as regular folks on May 21.
Exact times are still being worked out, but a preliminary schedule indicates that public tours of the new center will begin about 3 p.m. that day, with a ribbon cutting about 4:30 p.m. and a special, $125-per-person dinner afterward.
Rising country star and Marana High School graduate Troy Olsen is slated to give a concert after dinner, and the public is welcome to attend. Concert tickets are $10 in advance or $15 at the gate.
Ora Mae Harn likely would be proud.
Frequently referred to as Marana's matriarch, Harn was a founder of the Marana Health Center and served as its executive director during very difficult financial times. She died last summer, as the new building was beginning to take shape across the street from the Marana Municipal Complex.
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The little health center at North Sandario and West Grier roads in north Marana has come a long way since CEO Clarence Vatne arrived in October 2001.
Under his leadership, the 12,781-square-foot clinic has evolved into a health-care system, sprouting 14 satellite clinics across the metropolitan Tucson area and now moving into bigger digs in what has been touted as Marana's future downtown.
With 310 employees, it might seem hard to believe that at one time, Marana Health Center had one computer and 25 employees working out of one little building.
Take a tour of the old building and the need for more space quickly becomes evident. If two people are talking in a hallway, they must back up against a wall to let other people pass.
The building is old and has been added onto piecemeal over the years.
When the exam rooms got new monitoring equipment, the monitors couldn't be bolted directly into the walls because the walls weren't strong enough to hold them. Instead, wood boards had to be attached to the walls, and the monitors were bolted to the boards.
Vatne said planning for the new building began at a board of directors retreat about eight years ago.
Marana was going through explosive growth at the time, and the need for primary health care - of which the health center is the only provider in the Marana area, Vatne said - was on the rise.
Even now with the economic downturn, the bigger building is warranted, as more services are needed for low-income families and the uninsured, who remain a big part of the health center's patient demographic, he said.
"The health center will offer expanded capabilities in all areas of primary health services to all members of this community," Vatne said. "The community has become very much aware of the quality of service that the health center provides, and I think this building is very much the symbol of that."
Marana Mayor Ed Honea, a lifelong Maranan and longtime friend of Harn, said the new health center will be a major part of the town's infrastructure.
"It's giving us a sense of place now," he said. "Marana's getting large enough that we need good health care. If you can have a place with dental, medical and behavioral health that they can provide to the community, what a tremendous asset."
Contact reporter Shelley Shelton at sshelton@azstarnet.com or 807-8464.
