While Goshen’s community center is still in development, two of the perspective tenants the town hoped to have rent space in the building have opted to not follow through on signing a lease for space: the Rockbridge Area Health Center and now the Goshen branch of the Rockbridge Regional Library.
The library’s decision was made at its board meeting on Oct. 23 in a unanimous vote to not move forward with leasing space in the community center.
In an email to The News- Gazette on Friday, Rockbridge Regional Library Director Julie Goyette explained that comments were made at the meeting from town residents who spoke against moving the library from its current location in the old firehouse on Main Street. But the board’s decision was also based around several questions and concerns from their attorney regarding the lease agreement that had been presented to the board. Those questions included how the rent amount was calculated, what the operating cost allocations were, clarifying who the other tenants of the building would be, defining which areas would be considered “common areas,” and what the plans for maintenance and water and humidity control would be.
“The attorney’s concerns, coupled with the public comments shared with the board of trustees during the same meeting, greatly influenced the board’s decision not to move forward with the project,” Goyette said in her email.
She also noted that the lease had been presented to the library’s board of trustees at its Sept. 25 meeting and that Goshen Vice Mayor Steve Bickley, who has been heading the project, asked that the board vote on whether to move forward with leasing space in the community center by the end of October so the town could move forward with finalizing the preliminary work needed to secure the grant funding from the Virginia Department of Housing and Community Development.
Both Goyette and Bickley confirmed that the attorney’s concerns about the lease had not been shared with the town prior to the October meeting. Bickley told The News-Gazette in an email that he and the other representatives from the town had indicated when the lease was presented to the board in September that they “were open to pretty much any changes they proposed.”
He also said that the town hadn’t asked for a vote to proceed by the end of October, but had asked for said vote at the Sept. 25 meeting with the intent of signing the lease in October. The board had moved at the September meeting to let the attorney look at the lease first.
After the meeting, and prior to the library releasing a statement detailing the concerns from the attorney, Goshen Mayor Tom McCraw sent a letter asking the board to reconsider their decision and gave them a deadline of Nov. 30 to do so, after which the town will begin pursuing other tenants for the space in order to meet the DHCD deadline of Feb. 5.
As of Tuesday morning, the town had received no further response from the library board to indicate that they would reconsider the vote or that they would be willing to work with the town to attempt to resolve the concerns raised by the attorney.
- The Rockbridge Area Health Center’s decision to not pursue leasing space in the community center was made earlier this year after a lease was presented in June.
Suzanne Sheridan, CEO of the health center, told the News-Gazette in an email last week that the decision was based in part on the terms of the lease, which had both a higher rent than expected and proposed a term that was “longer than we could reasonably commit to.” She also noted that the cost of “building out and equipping a medical office is significant and would require a great deal of community support to be sustainable.”
The health center has been sending its mobile medical clinic to Goshen to provide medical services to the residence since June of 2023. Between then and October of this year, the mobile clinic has served 20 individual patients with 58 visits.
“This limited utilization has caused us to question both the level of need and the community support necessary to maintain a permanent site,” Sheridan said.
She also noted that changes to programs at both the state and federal level – most notably reductions in grant funding and “major shifts” in both the Medicaid and insurance marketplace programs – factored into the decision because they “have the potential to be financially devastating for health centers like ours.”
“Medicaid currently sustains more than 60 percent of RAHC’s operations and directly funds staff, medications, and patient care programs,” she said. “In this environment, it is critical that we remain cautious and conservative in our financial approach to any new project.”
Following the health center’s decision to not establish a permanent site in the community center, Bickley told The News-Gazette that the town would be pursuing other health care providers to lease space in the community center.
