Another new health care facility is on the horizon for the town of Dunkirk. A Five Star Urgent Care hopes to break ground on Vineyard Drive by this time next year.

Dr. John Radford, Five Star founder and chief executive offer, stated that due to his personal ties to the Dunkirk area, when his company was looking to expand, he knew Dunkirk had to be thrown into consideration.

“We look at the need based on Emergency Department visits that are in the area, and also the population. So there’s an analysis that’s done on that, and the Dunkirk-Fredonia area fit the parameters,” Radford said. “I used to be, back in the early 2000s, the director of the Emergency Department at Brooks Memorial, back when I practiced medicine, so I actually have some familiarity with Dunkirk just on a personal level.”

Right now, Five Star is in the process of finalizing the lease for the plot of land they plan on erecting the new urgent care building, while also drawing up plans as to how the site will look. Typically, there is a nine-12 month time frame when it comes to starting a building from scratch, so it will take a while before the organization can bring any blueprints and plans before the town board.

It is anticipated that the job will bring about 15 jobs to the area, seeing as how the facility is open 12 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.

Radford anticipates soon speaking with Brooks Memorial Hospital to discuss some sort of partnership to help better serve the hospital and the community.

“Typically, we try to partner ourselves so they get any progress notes on patients. We do still end up transferring some patients to the Emergency Department, so we have discussions about utilizing their resources like radiology — we don’t have a CAT scan or an MRI machine,” Radford stated. “We have a small service lab, so it’s not on a scale of what a hospital has, so we love to partner and support the community to advance their services as well as reach out to the primary care doctors to make sure we’re meeting their needs as far as after hours care.”

Down the road, Five Star Urgent Care has plans to open locations in the Buffalo area as well.