Guthrie Ithaca City Harbor location to open next week

Longtime readers of Tompkins Weekly may remember back in October of 2019 when we took a dive into some of the biggest development projects coming to Ithaca’s waterfront (tinyurl.com/yk46mjz3). Among them was the City Harbor project, consisting of a full-service restaurant, a pedestrian promenade, improved boating and golfing amenities, 156 apartments and a Guthrie Medical Center office building.

Well over two years later, Ithaca residents can finally see some of the results of the long-awaited project, as Guthrie Ithaca City Harbor opens for patients Feb. 7.

Guthrie’s new location at 720 Willow Ave. is a 60,000-square-foot, three-story structure and includes health care offerings in a wide variety of fields, including audiology, gastroenterology, breast surgery, family medicine, orthopedics, radiology, sports medicine and more.

While Guthrie’s current location on Hanshaw Road in Ithaca will remain open, the new facility expands and enhances Guthrie’s offerings, said Dr. David Ristedt, regional medical director and family medicine doctor for Guthrie’s northern region. Additional services being offered at the new location include a GI/endoscopy suite, comprehensive breast care, expanded primary care, large physical therapy space and comprehensive eye care.

“We’ve had a pretty robust footprint here with specialists and with primary care, but it’s all been in the Hanshaw Road or the orthopedic office that’s up by the airport,” Ristedt said. “Guthrie made the decision to invest further into the community by building this medical office building so that we could have a more established regular footprint for specialty services to augment what we’re already doing in primary care up at Hanshaw.”

To finalize exactly what the new space would look like, Guthrie performed a community needs assessment and weighed those results with its “own desires as far as how we want to be able to expand to serve the community,” Ristedt said.

“The style of the building is something that we’ve worked with architectural firms in the past to do,” he said. “If you look at our Big Flats medical office building, it looks very similar. … But we also built that building to support the providers that we want in there.”

Though the pandemic has created a host of challenges for development projects across the county, especially with supply chain issues, Guthrie’s new location didn’t see much of a delay.

“No project ever gets done on time,” Ristedt said. “This has really only been delayed by a month from what our initial expectations are. So, the architectural firm and the construction engineers that have been working on this project since we got it started, I was there when they drove the first pilings into the ground to set the foundation. … I will tell you that I’ve been very impressed with the construction, the construction crews. The supply, the steel and the drywall and all the rest of that stuff, it’s really gone very smoothly from my perspective.”

Ristedt currently sees roughly 500 patients for primary care at the Hanshaw Road location, but come next week, his practice will move to the new City Harbor location. He said maintaining his primary care role will help him in his position as regional director.

“Being embedded in the medical office building gives me an opportunity to keep an eye on the practices, find out what they’re struggling with, see if there’s any supply issues or some workflows that need to be optimized, things like that,” he said.

The new location doesn’t support surgeries on site, Ristedt said, which means that patients needing surgery will be directed to Guthrie’s other locations, like those in Cortland and Sayre, Pennsylvania.

Out of all the qualities of the new location, Ristedt said he’s most excited about the atmosphere the space creates, emphasizing patients’ safety and quality of care.

“Obviously, the atmosphere makes a difference in the end how the patient perceives their care,” he said. “So, I think that we’re going to deliver the same quality health care that we’ve been delivering and then a newer facility with better optimized workflows and ergonomics. So, I’m excited as a primary care, but also watching the specialists do what they do, they’re going to have the best of everything from the start right there in the building. And they’ll be able to do what they need to do for the care of the patient right there.”

Shawn Karney, associate vice president of regional operations at Guthrie’s Sayre location, explained that much of that effect can be attributed to the project’s “LEAN concept design.”

“Our LEAN concept design creates patient areas and staff areas,” he said in an email. “This allows the patient to stay in one location for all their services while the staff is able to move around the patients. The providers, clinicians, caregivers are all able to come in and out of the room very seamlessly, working from their collaborative workspace. The patient can stay right in the exam room. They don’t have to move around for services in the building. That makes the care more patient-centered. It makes the care safer. And it maintains privacy for the patient.”

Ristedt said that the new location has even more benefits that will come as more of the City Harbor project is completed.

“It’s right there near the nine-hole golf course,” he said. “If I get some time on Wednesday afternoon, I’ll be out playing golf. So, just from a personal perspective, having that right there, it’s a great opportunity for open-air projects. Plus, we’ve got the apartment complex or the condos that are going in down there, the living quarters, and then the shops that go along with that. It’s going to give our staff and, I think, the community an opportunity for bringing everything together.”

So far, the general reaction to the new center’s arrival has been positive, and plenty of folks have expressed an eagerness to see the inside.

“There are those who are looking at it and saying, ‘I wonder how that’s going to compete [with other medical centers]’ and others that are just excited because it raises the bar for the whole community as it relates to health care delivery,” Ristedt said. “If you are, let’s say, an optometrist, you’re going to have to step your game up because there’s a new opportunity here in town. So, patients have choice. We want them to obviously choose Guthrie. But in the end, all we care about is care of the community. As long as the people are staying healthy and getting healthy, then we’re happy.”

As for Ristedt, he said he’s excited to start seeing patients next Monday.

“When we get an opportunity to open these doors and show the community what we’re bringing there, I’m hopeful that they see it the same way that I do,” he said. “I’m looking forward to working down there.”

Jessica Wickham is the managing editor of Tompkins Weekly. Send story ideas to them at editorial@vizellamedia.com.