The Blaine City Council unanimously approved a conditional use permit for a new medical office facility July 7.
The 50,000-square-foot, two-story, Lexington Meadows Medical Office Building will be located at 4181 108th Ave. NE, on the southwest corner of the intersection at 109th Avenue and Lexington Avenue. The tenants in the building have not been decided yet.
The Lexington Meadows Medical Office Building will be composed of brick, metal panels and glass. The site will have 292 parking stalls for the entire building, City Planner Lori Johnson said in her report on the project.
The applicant, Terrain Holdings LLC, describes the building as a “health village.” It will include a primary care clinic, urgent care clinic, specialty care clinic, cardiac diagnostics and rehabilitation clinic, and imaging and lab services.
Johnson said the building will operate 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. seven days a week. Evening and weekend hours will be needed for the 12-bay urgent care clinic.
“This is going to be higher-end jobs for the community, and it does bring in potential residents, … and with the amount of development going on in the northeast sector of the city, I think this is something that I think is needed in that area,” Council Member Wes Hovland said.
“It’s not ideal, but I think it will be a good asset to this sector of the community,” Council Member Jess Robertson said.
Community Development Director Erik Thorvig said the Lexington Meadows Medical Office Building is part of the larger Lexington Meadows development project that includes a grocery store, fast food and restaurants, retail, a Kwik Trip gas station and convenience store, coffee shop, bank and the 192-unit Legends of Blaine affordable senior apartment building.
Thorvig said the Lexington Meadows Medical Office Building will go on the site originally designated for a grocery store. The grocery store is still planned as part of the Lexington Meadows development, but its location is not finalized.
Council Member Chris Massoglia said he wasn’t terribly excited about a medical building in the development instead of retail but that it wasn’t “a make-or-break situation” for him. He asked the rest of the City Council what they thought of the project.
“I don’t think anyone here was like, hooray a medical building,” Robertson said to Massoglia. “I think this is why council has been taking the extra time with staff to go through the areas we can control. We do hear residents. Residents see this pop up on the internet, and they lose their minds, like: ‘They don’t care. We’re never going to get a grocery store. We’re never going to get all these amenities.’ They’re coming, just this isn’t the space we could control.”
