MOVILLE, Iowa (KCAU)– For roughly 4 years the soon-to-be plot of land for the Moville Area Medical Clinic has been vacant, but today community members gathered on frontage road to celebrate the groundbreaking ceremony for the new facility.

“Our current medical facility is closed down and just like any small community we had to rally around because we needed medical facility here,” said Chris Countryman, former president of the Moville Chamber Of Commerce.

“The medical clinic board came to us and they went ahead and said hey we got this property would you go ahead and work with us. We did go ahead and sell to them for a $1, and they did quite a bit of the rest,” said Jim Fisher, the mayor of Moville.

The soon-to-be 10,000-square-foot facility will provide a variety of aid to more than a thousand residents in Moville.

“So there will be a primary provider in the facility, there’s also going to be an expansion of our current physical therapy facility that we have in Moville right now. There will also be a little bit of space left over in which at this point in time we are taking a look at what else we want to put in here, if it’s gonna be other medical facilities, possible wellness center,” said Countryman.

Moville isn’t the only community that will reap the benefits of the clinic once it’s constructed.

“It serves our rural community, serves the city of Moville, but it also serves the surrounding areas. Sioux City is 13 miles away correct, but if you go ahead and live another 10 miles to the east, or to the south, or north that makes driving distance a lot farther,” said Fisher.

“Not everybody is able to make that 15, 20, 25-minute drive to where they need to go, and not all of those facilities are that close, a lot of facilities are even further on. We have to go cross the river in order to access some of the facilities,” said Countryman.

To fund the Moville Area Medical Clinic’s construction, officials have applied for many grants and received multiple donations from members of the community.

Jim Fisher, the mayor of Moville has been on board with the project since the very beginning. Fisher says he sees this as an opportunity to grow the town’s population.

“Economic development, you go ahead and look towards the future, one thing leads to another. We have professional people possibly moving to town to work at this facility, and so it’s a good gamble,” said Fisher.

“We have people talking right now anything from bringing in a new daycare center, and the wellness center, and some other projects they’d love to see in this community. And seeing something of this magnitude happening in a small community like Moville just helps give everybody the energy to take on more projects,” said Countryman.

The Moville area medical clinic is expected to start construction in the spring of 2024 and be completed and moved into by the end of that year.