HMC Rehab Center Relocating
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C-T Photo / Drew Van Dyke

CAPTION: Hedrick Medical Center will be moving its Rehabilitation Services Center from its current location in Park Center to the former Cooke Sales & Service building along North U.S. Highway 65 on Jan. 16, 2012. Shown is the iconic Cooke's rooftop and the newly faced HMC Rehab sign. HMC is leasing the building for two years from Bill Mast.

Hedrick Medical Center will be relocating its Rehabilitation Services Center come mid-January.

Persons can find the business at the former Cooke Sales & Service building, on North U.S. Highway 65 in Chillicothe, starting January 16, 2012. The building staffs 15 employees, according to Betsy Keithley, HMC manager of Rehabilitation Services and Occupational Health. The hospital's service center provides physical and speech therapies, as well as occupational health services (such as flu shots and hearing tests, etc., for local businesses). "We're taking everything we have [with us]," she said.

The move comes after HMC's Homecare and Hospice business set up shop at Chadwick Plaza - home to such businesses as ForSight Eyecare, McCoy and Samples Dental Clinic, Hedrick Family Care, etc.  - back in mid-December 2011, leaving Rehab Services to its own vices in the building the two used to share. "[The two] used to be in Park Center," HMC CEO Matt Wenzel said. The hospital felt that they needed a smaller space within which to host their rehab services, until the new hospital north of town (at the intersection of Mohawk Road and Washington Street/North U.S. Highway 65) is completed in the fall of 2013, said Wenzel. The old Cooke building was chosen to be that locale. "We chose this space," Wenzel said. "We needed less space, and this is the space we could find."

The official ribbon-cutting for the business will take place on February 7, 2012, at 10 a.m. "We wanted two weeks to get settled in," Wenzel said. "We want everyone to come out and see the new space," said Keithley. "While there, they can ask us any questions they may have about the services we provide."

Hedrick Medical Center is leasing the building from Bill Mast (who recently remodeled the structure). It is a two-year lease.

Cooke Sales & Services closed on May 18, 2009, following the death of company owner and operator Oscar Cooke. It was long-known for the lifelike wooden model bulldozer that sat atop the structure's roof.