GOLDEN — The site that once housed Fun City, a popular entertainment spot for children in South Jefferson County, soon will be replaced by medical offices after Jefferson County commissioners on Tuesday approved a request to rezone the land.
The new medical facility at the southeast corner of West Coal Mine Avenue and South Kipling Parkway will be run by Centura Health as a neighborhood health center and provide primary care services along with an urgent care area.
“We plan on providing multiple services,” Centura Health vice president of strategy Rick Hale said at the meeting. “People can come in and have urgent needs, but that’s not where it stops.”
The site was zoned to allow a medical office, but emergency medical use permission was needed as was the allowance of two cell towers to replace towers currently on top of the Fun City building.
The towers will be between 65 and 72 feet and will be disguised as pine trees. Other trees will be planted near the towers that should be close in height when they reach maturity.
Michelle Brokaw, a real estate adviser for Centura Health with the firm Fleisher Smyth Brokaw, said the plan is to demolish Fun City sometime this summer and hopefully serve patients by December 2017. The facility also will add more than 100 jobs to the area.
The new medical building will be less than half the size of Fun City at 44,000 square feet. Hale said Centura does not plan to sell any excess land in hopes that the facility can expand.
Fun City, which had previously gone by the names Fat City, Mr. Biggs and FunPlex, . The previous property owner, California-based Rainbow Investments, had until last year.
No one from the community spoke at the commissioners’ meeting to oppose the rezoning. County case manager Heather Gutherless noted there were some concerns previously about traffic in the area, the height of the cell towers and the need for another medical facility in the area.
There is a Swedish emergency facility within a mile of the site and a .
Hale noted this would be Centura’s third neighborhood health center in Jefferson County. There are sites in Golden and Arvada that both opened in the past few months.
Hale said: “We want to be part of the changing scene of healthcare and improve lives in Jefferson County.”
Joe Vaccarelli: 303-954-2396, jvaccarelli@denverpost.com or @joe_vacc
