A pediatrics group's new clinic joins a spurt in Midtown that includes Suncoast Total Healthcare and a pharmacy.
By JON WILSON
Published January 18, 2004
ST. PETERSBURG - A medical clinic for children, perhaps the first-ever in Midtown outside the immediate Bayfront Medical Center campus, will open this spring.
Pediatric Gastroenterology, Nutrition and Hepatology of Florida will move into a new building at 501 Dr. Martin Luther King St. S.
"They like to be considered the tummy doctors," said Kathleen Stein, clinic spokeswoman.
Local Drs. Daniel T. McClenathan and L. Julio Reinstein head the group. McClenathan has practiced in St. Petersburg since 1983, and Reinstein has been with him for 10 years.
The group also has offices in Tampa, Temple Terrace, Sarasota and New Port Richey. McClenathan has been on All Children's Hospital's medical executive board for 20 years and is the longtime chairman of the hospital's standards and credentials committee.
"We're very excited to get the practice going there," Reinstein said last week. "We're running out of space."
The group's current St. Petersburg office is a few blocks east and is about half the size of the new 7,500-square-foot Mediterranean Revival building under construction, Reinstein said.
Wayne Ismark's Seminole-based Buildcon Services Corp. is building the clinic.
It will have 13 examination rooms staffed by three doctors and three nurse practitioners.
Meanwhile, two blocks south, a multidisciplinary medical office has opened at 721 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. St. S.
Suncoast Total Healthcare offers medical doctors, chiropractors, physical therapists, osteopaths, and acupuncturists, said Kathy Lindemann, Suncoast's administrator.
The new ventures represent the latest in a recent bubble of medical activity in Midtown's core neighborhoods. The Johnnie Ruth Clarke Health Center on 22nd Street S is expected to open soon. A few blocks south, a medical office has opened in the building where the late Dr. Fred Alsup practiced for years.
And a pharmacy is under construction across the street from Johnnie Ruth Clarke.
City officials, neighborhood leaders and the doctors themselves are enthusiastic about the pediatrics clinic, speculating that it heralds the coming of more such developments.
"We figured that if we start, somebody will follow," Reinstein said.
Both the pediatrics clinic and the Total Healthcare office are on the eastern edge of Campbell Park. Neighborhood association president Harvey Brown said his organization talked about the developments at its meeting last week.
"They're going to give the neighborhood a shining light," Brown said.
The pediatrics group plans an open house when the clinic opens, Stein said.
The doctors reached out to the community in another way: Art purchased from Perkins Elementary School students will adorn clinic walls, Stein said.
Stein said the group will be looking for medical assistants, billing staff and other personnel to help run the office. People who live in the neighborhood are welcome to apply, she said.
Kevin Dunn, the city's managing director of development coordination, said the pediatrics group received some help on its site plan design but got no special incentives such as tax breaks.
"But they are eligible for that. Quite candidly, we could certainly have our economic development folks talk to them about that," Dunn said.
