CLEARFIELD — Most of the walls are bare, the table for Davis Health Board meetings has yet to arrive and some stairwells remain unpainted in the new $6.1 million Davis County Health Department building.
But the public health services operating out of the three-story structure, paid for using departmental savings over a three-year period, are open for business.
On Nov. 8, the health department moved from the 35-plus-year-old Davis County Courthouse Annex in Farmington to its new 45,000-square-foot building in Clearfield at 22 S. State St.
The new building provides the space to consolidate the communicable diseases, epidemiology, environmental health services, family health. senior services division and health administration services at one site.
It also provides 7,000 square feet of long-term leased space to Midtown Community Health Clinic, where the uninsured and under-insured can be served, officials said.
The move by county health to the new building, which is functional, but not opulent, was necessary because of the age of the building in Farmington, said Lewis R. Garrett, county health director.
"The old facility was very inadequate," he said.
There were serious problems with the heating, the building had mold in the walls, and many of the offices had no windows, he said.
Space in the former health building also was tight, with the storage area consisting of former jail cells, which had to be unlocked with a turnkey, he said.
Because of the age of the old jail annex, believed to have been built in the late 1970s, the county, as part of a multimillion-dollar plan to reshape the campus surrounding the Memorial Courthouse in downtown Farmington, has plans to raze the old annex building.
"It was hot in the summer and cold in the winter," Davis County Commissioner Bret Millburn said of the old annex that was inefficient when it came to utilities and space.
The old building was also inconvenient for those seeking health services, as a result of the services being spread out over the county's downtown Farmington campus, Millburn said.
The new building is a great improvement for residents because it consolidates those services in one building, he said.
The other reason for moving county health services to Clearfield, aside from the partnership the county had with Clearfield city to provide a large parcel of land to build on, is one of convenience.
"This makes us more convenient for more people," Garrett said, referring to the population base in the county being considerably more dense in the north end of the county because it includes Layton and Clearfield.
Garrett said he doesn't know how many people county health services annually serve, but estimates it is in the "tens of thousands" range.
"We touch the lives of every citizen in the county one way or another," he said.
Directly south of the new health department building is the ongoing construction of a $2.2 million senior activity center.
The county-operated center, a 15,000-square-foot single-story building, will be known as the North Davis Senior Activity Center, replacing Heritage Senior Activity Center in Clearfield at 140 Center St.
The plan is to move into the new center the first week of March, said Bob Ballew, county health public information officer.
Roughly 105 employees will be working in the two new county buildings in Clearfield, Garrett said.
County Clerk/Auditor Steve Rawlings said both buildings having been paid for using departmental savings over a three-year period beginning in 2007.