CLEARLAKE, Calif. — Three years after work on the project began, Lake County Tribal Health Consortium’s newest clinic is open and ready to serve the community.

The new state-of-the-art Southshore Clinic is located at 14440 Olympic Drive.

On Friday morning, Tribal Health Board members and clinic leadership, joined by local elected and community leaders, celebrated the grand opening and ribbon cutting of the 25,000-square-foot outpatient health clinic.

While the clinic had a soft opening in July, as of Friday, May 19 — a year after the facility was blessed — it’s fully open, said Chief Executive Officer Ernesto Padilla.

“From the beginning, this project was done right,” said Clearlake City Manager Alan Flora.

Tribal Health broke ground on the project in September 2020.

Its final price tag was $25 million, which Flora said was three times the original budget.

It has close to 60 staffers who offer medical services from children through seniors, including a soon-to-open pharmacy for tribal members and pain management.

The clinic also is the only facility to offer full dental services in Lake County. Dr. Eunsub Jang, one of Tribal Health’s dentists, said that the clinic has a monthly capacity of 1,700 dental patients. In April, they had 1,000 patients, and so far in May have had 700 patients.

Padilla said they’ve used every square inch of the vast new building’s space.

Even so, Flora said it’s already almost too small for the needs of the community, which has a health deficit and some of the worst health outcomes in the state.

“This is the type of development that we haven’t really seen here” but that they now expect, said Flora.

“I’m proud of what you all have done here,” Flora added.

Padilla and Flora both referred to a strong working relationship that Tribal Health and the city have enjoyed through the process.

Tribal Health contributed to the city’s new band shell at Austin Park, and on Friday they once again offered support to the city with a $150,000 donation to the Burns Valley Sports Complex the city of Clearlake is building.

Flora said Tribal Health’s new clinic is encouraging other development, too. A town house project is coming just down the street and the roads in the area will be redone next year.

He thinks the clinic will help the community’s outcomes, as access is important.

A tour of the building

David Santos, formerly president and CEO of Adventist Health Clear Lake, now is chief operating officer for Tribal Health.

He said 15% of Tribal Health’s patient population is Indigenous. That percentage used to be larger until they opened services to the general population.

Santos and other Tribal Health leaders led visitors through the building, beginning on the first floor in the thoughtfully designed waiting rooms for children, adults and those waiting for labs, and then through the medical and dental suites on the first and second floors.

Throughout the buildings there are glass cases, some of them filled with Pomo baskets and artifacts, some with community sports plaques.

Moving up the large spiral staircase, there is a mural of Lake County wildlife and geography, along with a map of Clear Lake and the six tribes in the consortium: Big Valley Rancheria, Elem Colony, Habematolel Pomo, Middletown Rancheria, Robinson Rancheria and the Scotts Valley Pomo. A seventh Lake County tribe, the Koi Nation, is not a consortium member.

Kevin Thompson, the Southshore Clinic manager, said an artist who has created murals for Cabela’s was hired to paint the mural, which he initially sketched out in just a day.

Thompson said COVID-19 resulted in changes to the clinic design. Some areas that originally had been designed with open floor plans ended up being enclosed, and every room now has its own self-contained decontamination equipment.

He said that, thanks to Bret Woods, Tribal Health’s chief financial officer — who also was on hand to lead members of the public through the building — the Lakeport clinic now has new equipment to match that found at the Southshore Clinic so the staff can rotate through the two clinics more easily.

Among the community residents who visited the facility during the grand opening was a woman who identified herself as Mindy. She said she has been living in the community since 1980 and she’s happy to see the good things happening in Clearlake.

Padilla said there’s “more to come” for Tribal Health, which is now in the design phase with NorthStar Designing Solutions — the same firm that did the Southshore Clinic — for a new administration building at its Lakeport facility on Bevins Court.

Construction on that project is expected to start in early 2024 and to be completed by the fall of 2025, Padilla said.

Tribal Health also has plans for its site on Parallel Drive in Lakeport, he said.

That site, used earlier this month for Tribal Health’s National Missing and Murdered Indigenous Peoples Day event, will remain a gathering site. Its parklike setting will be used for meetings and events, Padilla said.

Tribal Health is accepting new patients, not just tribal members but the underserved members of the community, including those who are on Medicare and Medi-Cal, as well as those who are uninsured.

For more information visit the Tribal Health website.

Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.