Urgent Care coming to downtown RVC

The Board of Zoning Appeals approved a plan to turn the former Village Luggage location, at 243 Merrick Road, into an Urgent Care facility.

Christina Daly/Herald

The Board of Zoning Appeals approved plans for an Urgent Care medical center in the middle of downtown Rockville Centre at its Dec. 10 meeting. The Urgent Care center will be at 243 Merrick Road, the former location of Village Luggage & Gifts.

The Urgent Care will have five examination rooms, three employees — a doctor, a medical assistant and a receptionist. The building would require 27 parking spaces according to village code, but the company behind the clinic, GoHealth Urgent Care, received a variance to allow for no parking since a municipal lot is nearby.

GoHealth Urgent Care is a national chain associated with North Shore-LIJ, which has provided varying degrees of ambulance service for the village since 2008.

“We very much want to be the community center and that’s why we want to be where we are, right there in the center of Rockville,” said Gary Weatherford, Chief Operating Officer of GoHealth. “When I came here I could see the vibrancy of the downtown, being in the township of Rockville, and I saw all the people out at eight o’clock, nine o’clock in the morning, just enjoying the yoga and the coffee and everything, and I thought this is the kind of community we enjoy being in.”

The clinic will be open Monday through Thursday from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., Fridays from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., and Saturday and Sunday from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. The reduced hours on Fridays and weekends are part of the board’s conditions to avoid staying open during the peak times for nearby restaurants and the movie theatre.

“It is anticipated that there will be an average of two to three patients per hour at peak times,” said Peter Rubin, the attorney representing Daniel Mermel, the president of the corporation that owns the building. “Which, based upon my client’s other clinics, are eight to 10 in the morning, and four to six in the evening. These are not peak retail hours.”

According to Rubin, the average clinic visit is 15 to 20 minutes, and the Urgent Care is designed for 22 or 23 patients per day.