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Sunny Market will be an outpatient dialysis clinic
02/25/2012 9:00 AM by John M
Last May, we reported that the former Sunny Market (which I’ve since heard referred to as also as the former “Siegal Market” – anybody got an era on that?) had been sold for just over $2 million. Since they started punching holes in the walls, I’ve been getting tons of email questions about the project, here is what I know: reader comments at the time reported rumor that the site was to be a dialysis center, rumor which was recently confirmed by the description on the active building permits.
It was Siegel’s market back in the 70s and 80s.
Wow. What a disappointment.
Really Max? I’d take a clinic over a vacant building. At least it’s a business that can serve those who need it in the community.
This is garbage. I was really hoping for some kind of market that offered healthy food options. Lets not prevent the problem, lets retroactively deal with it.
Why do we need two new medical centers in such close proximity to MCV, anyhow?
Certainly a dialysis center is better than an empty building, but we have several medical centers that perform dialysis in the area already, including a large hospital. A market or some other store could add so much to the neighborhood.
I think the clinic will be a fine addition to 25th street and will improve a highly visable and all around gross property. A market would have been nice, but anyone who has ever been in the grocery business will tell you that the numbers just aren’t there. With the Farm Fresh located at the bottom of the hill, there aren’t enough customers to float 2 grocery stores give the razor thin margins that business works on…especially when you look at the median incomes of the surrounding zip codes…those kinds of stats are not encouraging to a potential grocer. Let’s be excited that the property is going to be better looking and productive…another step in the right direction…so that someday there will be customer base strong enough to support all of the businesses we’d like to see up here.
I’m not on doubt that it might be hard to sustain another grocery, but technically, this area is a “food desert” and the people who live further north of broad do not have access to healthy foods.
It could have been a viable use of the building.
Another beneficial use could have been to divide the building in to smaller retail spaces.
Alas, it wasn’t meant to be.
You can’t stop a moving train. After 30+ years of a diabetes causing food system, the need for more and more dialysis centers is the result.
and ironically, a grocery store could help reverse that trend.
In a community meeting last week, a registered nurse said “dialysis clinics have a lot of drug-addicted clients.”
Well, that was news to me. I’d always thought dialysis centers were for folks with diabetes or some other naturally-caused illness that caused their kidneys to fail/under-perform.
A little online research shows that yes, folks who are addicted or have severe drug abuse (not just illegal narcotics but even over-the-counter drugs,) can find themselves needing regular dialysis due to the stress that substance abuse puts on their kidneys. I presume alcohol addiction would do the same, too.
This new dialysis center is here for a reason. Our community includes a significant population of folks with severe drug and alcohol dependency.
Am I happy about this center opening? No. But there is a population here that will benefit from its existence.
The bigger problem is that our society/government/healthcare system does next to nothing to help folks with addiction problems, before they get to the overdose or severe long-term abuse stage that requires dialysis.
My cynical self says that prevention programs are a hard sell because pharmaceutical companies haven’t figured out a way to make them profitable.
This makes our new dialysis center another part of the twilight-zone of our dysfunctional heath care system.
I was disappointed as well, but obviously there is more demand for this use. Otherwise I have no opinion of it, I guess it is better than a vacant building, but doubt it will really do anything positive or negative for the neighborhood as far as it affects my life. Hopefully it looks decent at least.
Elaine, I respectfully beg to differ with your point: “The bigger problem is that our society/government/healthcare system does next to nothing to help folks with addiction problems, before they get to the overdose or severe long-term abuse stage that requires dialysis.”
I think the bigger problem is that the users don’t respect themselves enough to take care of their bodies. It’s worthy of our help certainly, but if the users don’t care to break the cycle, we are flushing money down the drain treating the symptoms with stuff like this. If some crackhead/wino gets dialysis in the morning and is back at it afterwards, should we really be investing in the dialysis?
In fact, when so much of the damage that the dialysis is treating is self-inflicted, some may ask why should those who took care of their bodies in the first place be asked to pay for those who didn’t? None of us get the help you are suggesting is so critical, yet a vast majority of us don’t need it to stay on the right path.
Doesn’t providing free treatment for self-inflicted diseases create a sort of moral hazard? Why not eat what I want? If I get sick, it’s covered anyway.
Alcohol and substance abuse is a disease. I’m sure many of these folks started off using recreationally. Not everyone has the internal coping mechanisms necessary to not become an addict. In fact, science has shown that certain folks are more pre-disposed to abusing/becoming addicted to drugs and alcohol. And then, I’m sure sociologically, there has been some study to show the correlation between poverty and the abuse of drugs and alcohol. And lets not even talk about the lack of resources for people in the poorest neighborhoods to help battle addiction. We would rather lock people up and over burden the jail/prison industrial complex (a big money maker, mind you), then treat the issues.
As a neighborhood invested in improving the quality of life for ALL our citizens (not just our most wealthy), doesn’t it serve us better to act preventative versus retroactive?
Or would you rather we just “lock ’em up and throw away the key?”
So if I start abusing drugs/alcohol, it’s not my fault?
As a former addict and someone from a family with an alcoholic history, this is surprising news to me. All this time, I thought it was on me to clean up. I wish I had someone like the bleeding hearts on here to make excuses for me and to convince others to pay to keep me alive while I did what I wanted. Instead I was stupid enough to clean myself up so I could have my money spent on those who decided not to.
Fuck it, anyone know where I can find some drugs around here. Who needs work, responsibility and good health? We’ve got state funded dialysis in our neighborhood now so why bother.
For the record, I am 100% supportive of helping the less fortunate who got dealt a bad set of genes that they truly have no control over. I’m also not a fan of the war on drugs and think it’s as much a massive waste of money as the rest of our country’s recent “wars.” I wholeheartedly agree that criminalizing addicts so they can’t seek help is a bad idea. I just don’t think the solution is to combine prohibition with unlimited symptom treatment.
Elaine,really? Between your racial targeting of convenience stores,(When WAS the last time you protested the ABC license issuance of a white owned business?)to your supposition that the dialysis center is a giveaway for all those drug addicts you have really perfected the art of racism posing as social concern! Targeting the less fortunate and painting the dialysis center as a haven for drug addicts with self induced health problems is a master stroke that would make Frank Luntz shake his head in admiration! Your prejudice knows no limits Elaine ,but that still makes you less loathesome than a bunch of anonymous tonguewagging closet cases…..A conversation includes everyone or its just a monologue. Where are all the varied voices that fill our neighborhood?All I see are the same tired mystery haters playing the same ol tune…..Constantly talking about your less fortunate neighbors like they were impediments to some golden vision unwittingly discloses some ugly truths about your community commitment…..Now let the vitriol fly!
A quick check of dialysis centers sees them scattered around the city ……in all sorts of neighborhoods.Turning some needed construction into an opportunity for poor bashing is as good as watching a yoga contortionist! The lie that is being told here insults sick people by insinuating that A:their problems are of their own choosing and B:they are a bunch of drug addicts of who all live in our neighborhood! Get your facts about dialysis straight before you go around telling lies based on personal views….
@16 Buddy, really? If I simply posted something as inane as the “the sky is blue” you would call me some nasty name. No matter what I write, you’ll try to twist my words into something that was not written.
When alcoholism and drug abuse are called “diseases” it removes personal responsibility. Booze does not pour itself down someone’s throat, cocaine does not magically fly up someone’s nose, meth does not spontaneously ignite and send vapors up and syringes are not sharp little self-guided cruise missiles carrying smack as cargo. To drink or smoke or snort or shoot up has always been a choice. If someone doesn’t want to quit, no amount of begging, pleading, threats, jail, programs or rehab is going to make them. They have to want it. I know–I speak from experience. If we stopped promoting the victim mentality (“it’s not your fault, you have a disease/live in poverty/had a bad childhood!”) and encouraged people to find their own strength, a lot of good could be done. As for the dialysis clinic … well, if it makes one person say “you know, being hooked up to a machine to clean my kidneys so I can smoke more crack really sucks, I don’t want to do this anymore” and clean up, that’s one more empowered person.
“Personal responsibility”…what a novel concept. Actually taking responsibility for your actions, and accepting the consequences…wow, who does that? Personal Responsibility should be the 4th mandatory subject that they teach in school (along with Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic). Too bad some of us CHOOSE to see it as an “elective” course…kinda like French.
Multiple vacant buildings breed crime. A grocery store would have been nice, but I’d rather see a dialysis clinic than the building remain empty, especially if it serves a need.
In terms of drug and alcohol abuse being diseases, they most certainly are. I am a graduate student at the Virginia Institute for Behavioral Genetics, where we study alcohol and drug abuse, tobacco addition, schizophrenia, and many other diseases. Little known fact: drug and alcohol abuse are about 60% genetic. This doesn’t take away personal responsibility or personal choice. Think of it like this: when anyone starts drinking for the first time, they roll a dice. For some people they have a baseline chance of becoming an addict (general population risk). For others, the dice are loaded. Yes, they took that first drink, but their chances are much greater of becoming an addict. I know a fair amount of people of specifically choose not to drink at all because they have a family history of alcohol addiction. But let’s face it – we’re not all saints. People will drink. If you could have stayed away from the booze you wouldn’t have ended up an addict, but you may just be one of those people that were much more likely to become an addict in the first place, and will find it that much harder to quit. Harder, not impossible with the right help. And you do have to want to quit. Problem is, an addict will find it that much harder to want to quit than your average Joe – they may need more time or an extra helping hand.
Point of interest – before they found the genetic cause for epilepsy it was considered a mental disease, and either the individual or their family was blamed for causing the disease. Alcohol and drug addiction has a huge genetic component – we just haven’t moved away from the stereotypes and the blame-games yet. Also, there really are other people being served at clinics like these than drug addicts, those that no matter what your personal views have no choice in the matter. Let’s not be so quick to judge our fellow human beings.
For more info, here is a link of causes of chronic kidney disease in the U.S. population (that would cause a need for kidney dialysis treatments):
http://kidney.niddk.nih.gov/kudiseases/pubs/kustats/
I’m assuming the “other” category would include drug/alcohol related causes (along with many other causes). This category only makes up about 16% of those with chronic kidney disease.