Business View Civil and Municipal | March 2021

42 CIVIL AND MUNICIPAL MARCH 2021 Ready to Care for You Conveniently located at 9 Loon Hill Road , Circle Health Dracut offers a range of services: • Walk-In Urgent Care with Occupational and Travel Medicine Services • COVID-19 Testing and Treatment • Lowell General Hospital Patient Service Center • Primary Care • Diabetes and Endocrine Center • OB/GYN Practice Learn more about our services at www.circle-health.org/dracut. Loon Hill Road is an outpatient facility offering key services including walk-in urgent care, primary care, outpatient testing and diagnostic imaging services. Behind that building is Genesis HealthCare, a private 120-bed skilled nursing facility specializing in long-term care, orthopedic rehabilitation, and senior living services. Genesis Healthcare has not begun construction due to the pandemic and other extenuating circumstances, but they have extended their permitting, so they are expected to move forward. “Our previous Town Manager and I made the conscious decision to move forward with economic development in the healthcare industry,” says Vandal. “We have quite an elderly population which continues to grow, and so that’s been one of our focuses. Getting over the bridge to Lowell, where a lot of the physicians and hospitals are, can be difficult for those residents. We’re trying our best to provide as many services in town as we possibly can so that they don’t have to get in their car, trek across town, and deal with city parking.” The neighboring city of Lowell (pop. 111,000) sits across the Merrimack River from Dracut. It’s home to Lowell General Hospital, Encompass Health Rehabilitation Hospital, and an array of preventative healthcare services. Vandal says they’re currently working on a Mammoth Road development in Dracut to bring some of those same medical, dental, and health care services closer to home. Also down the pipeline for Dracut is the Town Hall Annex project, developed by the Coalition for a Better Acre, in partnership with Veterans Northeast Outreach Center and Veterans Assisting Veterans. Vandal recounts, “When we built the new Town Hall six years ago, we put several town departments, including Building