Community Medical Centers of Fresno moves some corporate staff to Clovis

Community Medical Centers has moved about 40 of its corporate officers and support staff from office space in downtown Fresno to new digs on the campus of the Clovis Community Medical Center.

The administrative offices had been in leased space in the Westamerica Bank building at Tulare and O streets, several blocks from the Community Regional Medical Center.

As that lease expired, work was being completed on a new office building that is part of a $300 million expansion of the Clovis hospital.

“The new office was built … on land we already own,” said John Zelezny, Community’s chief communications officer. “So we avoid paying rent, and the office will pay for itself in several years.”

The move took place in mid-December. Among the relocated functions were corporate operations, legal services, finance and the corporate board of trustees.

Zelezny said most of Community’s 500 corporate employees remain either in downtown Fresno or at the Sierra Community Health Center campus on Dakota Avenue in central Fresno.

The move does not affect staffing at Community Regional Medical Center, the company’s largest hospital. Of Community’s more than 6,000 employees, about three-quarters work in downtown Fresno.

Community said it has no plans to move any more corporate functions from downtown Fresno.

The Clovis offices were not built to handle any more people than have already moved and would not be able to accommodate a full relocation of the corporate and administrative staff, the company said.

But, Zelezny added, “leases are routinely evaluated” when they come up for renewal.

Community couldn’t determine immediately how much office space is leased but, according to property tax databases, at least three office sites on or near the main hospital campus in Fresno are leased rather than owned by Community.

That includes the administrative support, human resources and medical records offices across Fresno and Divisadero streets from the hospital, and a building that houses Community’s communications staff and medical offices.

In 2007, Community completed the merger of services from the old University Medical Center at Ventura and Cedar avenues into an expansion of the Fresno Community Hospital campus in downtown.

Over several years, about $300 million was spent to expand Community Regional Medical Center into a sprawling 58-acre complex at Fresno and Divisadero streets with new emergency, trauma and burn-care departments and other medical facilities — but not corporate administration offices.

“When the downtown campus was expanded, the priority was needed space for medical services, not office space,” Zelezny said in a statement. “Office space is cheap by comparison, and was obtained as necessary for corporate staff, in most cases somewhere downtown.”

Fresno city officials, who have focused much attention on attracting and keeping businesses downtown, suggested that Community’s modest move — less than 10% of its corporate staff — was not cause for alarm.

They said they’re not worried that Community would uproot its entire administrative and corporate staff from downtown Fresno.

“We’ve been on a pretty positive kick lately, so part of it is not being overly reactive to something like this,” said Craig Scharton, the city’s manager of downtown and community revitalization.

“We’d love to keep everybody downtown, but we know there’s going to be an ebb and flow.”

Scharton said multiple housing projects in the downtown area have opened in recent weeks, one restaurant is reopening and another being remodeled.

He added that his staff is working on bringing “another big professional office tenant downtown.” Scharton declined to say who the possible tenant might be.

Clovis City Manager Rob Woolley said he’s glad that the new building on the Clovis hospital campus can meet some of Community’s administrative office needs. But because it represents only a few dozen people, he expects the real benefits to come from the expansion of the hospital itself, including doubling the number of beds and the additional medical personnel.

“We’re hopeful that we’ll start seeing more medical-related businesses,” Woolley said. “We’re hoping it will attract a medical eye surgery center and other medical facilities that we’ve been lacking for so long here in Clovis.”

By Tim Sheehan