Will-Grundy Medical Clinic in Joliet still free, but ‘first class’

The Will-Grundy Medical Clinic has been remodeled inside and out, providing patients in need of free health care with surroundings comparable to what is found in private doctors’ offices around town.

The building at 213 E. Cass St. in Joliet was renovated with $900,000 in contributions from government grants and donors after the clinic was forced out of the building in 2020 because of a failed roof and other problems.

“We had to leave the building because it was deteriorating and in significant disrepair,” Will-Grundy Medical Clinic Executive Director Shawn Marconi said Saturday at an open house to provide a public view of the renovated facility. “The building is 123 years old.”

The building may have looked its age in 2020. But it doesn’t now.

Inside, new office space, modern furnishings, carpeting, paint and plentiful artwork donated by the Strange & Unusual Gallery in Joliet create comfortable surroundings for the typically indigent patients who need the clinic.

The clinic, with the help of volunteer doctors and nurses, provides free medical care to indigent and uninsured patients in Will and Grundy counties..

“We wanted our most vulnerable population to be served in a dignified, healthy and clean setting,” Marconi said. “When people are served in a healthy, clean environment, it’s not only better for their health care but it’s better for their mental health.”

Mental health care is among the services provided by the Will-Grundy Medical Clinic.

“This is really new,” Sonia Gutheridge, director of clinic operations, said as she showed the Behavioral Health Suite in a tour of the facility.

The clinic had been operating at three temporary locations until it was able to return in December to the building at 213 E. Cass St., Gutheridge said.

“Our building was literally falling apart. Our roof collapsed. We really needed the renovations.”

The roof was repaired with contributions from the Rotary Club of Joliet. The federal government, Will County, and the city of Joliet provided funding for other renovations.

Those renovations included a masonry coating that now covers the brick exterior that was leaking, as was the old roof before the renovations.

Brett Mitchell, managing principal with Ethos Workshop Architects, which designed the renovations, said the building leaks were so bad that people could feel them inside.

“It was coming in from the roof. It was coming in from the walls,” Mitchell said. “There was a damp feeling to the building.”

Ethos Workshop Architects worked with R. Berti Building Solutions, the construction manager for the project, to get the aging building back into shape.

“We wanted to have a transformation that would express to everyone who came in here that they will have first-class health care,” Mitchell said.

Attendees at the open house were impressed with the result.

“I’m very pleased that it has shaped up the way it has,” said Sister Albert Marie Papesh.

Papesh, a member of the clinic board, was on the first board when the clinic was formed in 1988 and a member of the search committee that found its first location.

The clinic started in 1988 in two rooms in the basement of the Spanish Community Center.

It was housed next to a boiler room, Papesh said, and the move to Cass Street in the late 1990s was a big step up.

“It was absolutely beautiful,” Jean Roach, who was executive director at the time of the move, said of the Cass Street building.

The building, previously used by a plumbing company, was gutted and renovated back then before the Will-Grundy Medical Clinic moved into it.

Flowers were planted outside for much the same reason that the latest renovation includes carpeting and artwork on the walls.

“We wanted it to be welcoming,” Roach said.