Plans in development for Johnstown walk-in medical clinic at former Cambria-Rowe site

Dave Sutor, The Tribune-Democrat, Johnstown, Pa.
·3 min read

Jul. 19—A lease agreement approved on Tuesday means that a new walk-in urgent care medical clinic might be operating in the city of Johnstown by this time next year.

The Johnstown Redevelopment Authority unanimously approved an agreement to lease the former Cambria-Rowe Business College building, located at 221 Central Ave. in the city's Moxham section, to an organization called Ave Maria Medical Center, led by Dr. George Frem, a well-known local kidney doctor.

The mission is to open a site where patients can receive basic medical care for common illnesses and routine injuries, along with services such as telemedicine, physicals, family practice treatment, women's health and prepared meals for people with special dietary needs such as heart disease and diabetes.

Programs are expected to be developed in phases.

"In a nutshell, this medical center will have something for everybody — something for the elderly people, something for the women, something for the young people," Frem said.

Other urgent care medical clinics already exist in the region, but Frem said this his planned urgent care center is "much needed for the city of Johnstown." The clinic will be an extension of the health care he has been providing the community throughout his career, he said.

"This is just the journey that I started many years ago," Frem said. "This is going to ... put it together in one package where I'm able to provide compassionate care and take care of people with dignity, the right way. It means a lot to me because that's the journey I started, and now it's going to be meaningful for me."

Frem hopes the center can open by next summer, but that schedule is dependent on how long construction takes, given current supply-chain limitations. He has worked closely with JRA Chairman Msgr. Raymond Balta on the project.

"I just think that the city itself should have, absolutely, an urgent-care facility," Balta said. "Plus these other facilities are for people who, I think, are looking for something that's more comprehensive with their health care."

Balta called the proposed clinic "a great thing for the city."

"I think preventive medicine and preventive care and concern, that's going to make the big difference in the community, as well," Balta said. "I think this is really unique."

The center will move into a building that has sat vacant since Cambria-Rowe Business College closed in 2016.

JRA, which purchased the structure after the college's closure, had been working with Pittsburgh-based Telehealth Suite, a health care technology company that wanted to open a call center to support people recovering from opioid addiction. That plan never came to fruition.

Balta and JRA Executive Director Melissa Komar said Telehealth Suite did not commit to a definitive timeline, so the authority moved on from the project. Telehealth Suite President Apryle Horbal, a Richland High School graduate, did not immediately respond to an interview request.

Grant funding for the Telehealth Suite project had already been secured, including more than $1.2 million in state Redevelopment Assistance Capital Program money and $1.95 million from the U.S. Department of Commerce Economic Development Administration.

Those funds will now go to the Ave Maria plan.

"Because the grants that we applied for were geared toward health care, we're able to utilize the grants that we never drew down on for the Cambria-Rowe building for this project," Komar said. "They were our grants to begin with, owned by the authority, never owned by TeleHealth."

Komar added: "We've never drawn down one dollar of the funding, so it's really nothing. It's just like the grants will start from scratch because we never used them."

State Rep. Jim Rigby and state Sen. Wayne Langerholc Jr. said they both support transferring the state funds from the Telehealth Suite project to the proposed Ave Maria Medical Center.