Vet clinic expanding

The nature of rural veterinary work has changed over the past 50 years, and a local veterinarian is adding to his clinic to accommodate.
Dr. Christian Bader of Portland Veterinary Clinic is at the end of an expansion that will take into account how clientele has changed over time.
“This building was built as a veterinary clinic and probably, I’m going to guess, at that point in time, 30 percent of the business was small animal and 70 percent was large animal,” said Bader. “And now, I probably do 95 percent small animal and 5 percent large animal … so it’s basically shifted so the purpose of the building and the layout of the building and the size of the building all needed to be changed.”
That change is being reflected in the renovation and expansion of his clinic, essentially doubling the size of the practice to 3,100 square feet from 1,575 square feet.
The addition to the back of the existing building will hold the reception area, exam rooms, treatment area and Bader’s office, something he’s never had before. The original structure will become the non-public area where kennels will be held, with separate rooms for cats and dogs.
This expansion doesn’t come as a surprise to Bader. He’s been planning on building since he moved in 20 years ago.
“I knew at that point in time that it’d be sufficient for a period of time, the building as it was, and I knew I’d want to change it at some point in time,” said Bader. “It was just a matter of when I could afford to do it.”
Over those 20 years, Bader has thought of selling the building, constructed in 1966, and finding a new place to practice, but thought the location on West Votaw Street was too good to give up. Expansion was always in the back of his mind, going so far as having blueprints drawn up 10 years ago, but the cost of the construction wasn’t worth the work at the time.
“The appraisal came back, it was going to cost roughly $180,000 to do the project, and the building was only going to be worth $175,000, plus what I owed on the building to begin with,” said Bader.
The numbers were more feasible this year, and construction on the project began in April. With a timeline to have the project done in eight to 10 weeks, construction is now nearing the end of its fourth month, which has been at some moments frustrating, but ultimately rewarding for Bader.
“It’s frustrating to an extent that it’s taken this long, but when you see what they’re doing and how they’re doing it, it’s like, ‘Okay, it’s fine by me that it’s taken that long,’” said Bader. “They’re doing it right, and we’ve made some minor changes here and there along the way.”
A lot of the delay has been because of conflicting schedules with contractors, which Bader said was to be expected, but for a few weeks, it led to a very uncomfortable work situation.
“We were without air conditioning up until about a month ago,” said Bader. “It was pretty hot. Luckily, we had a relatively easy summer, all things considered. There was a stretch of about two to three weeks where it was really hot in here. We had windows open, fans going, all that sort of stuff. It got to be a bit uncomfortable near the end of the day.”
Bader takes the hiccups in stride knowing that “sometimes things just don’t fit into place.”
Construction on the addition should be finished by Monday, with everything from the existing building being moved to the new building so the crew can get to work on renovating the old structure.
The entire project should be completed by October, with Bader hoping to have an open house to show off his building’s expansion.
The reason for the expansion was always the simple need for more space for his eight person staff, but Bader also kept in mind his eventual “exit strategy” from the clinic.
“If I were to come in here now, and this place was for sale (as it was), I would have a real hard time buying it as a clinic because it just isn’t sufficient enough,” said Bader. “Being able to build on and add to things and modernize, hopefully it would be attractive to someone to come in here. If we do have a need for another veterinarian, I don’t want to have to wait five years to have the right person come in. The facility is going to be attractive enough and good enough for somebody to want to work here.”[[In-content Ad]]