Whitman-Walker Health is planning a new healthcare center at the St. Elizabeths East Campus, which will allow the healthcare provider to triple the number of people it can see annually in Southeast to 15,000 patients.

The planned 118,000-square-foot facility will include primary, behavioral, dental, and substance misuse treatment care, as well as a pharmacy. It makes Whitman-Walker the first tenant on the vast, city-owned campus in Congress Heights, which also includes the city’s Entertainment and Sports Arena and The R.I.S.E. Demonstration Center.

Whitman-Walker has been operating in Anacostia since 1993, when it opened the Max Robinson Center, which sees about 5,000 patients each year. “We’ve always known we’ve wanted to expand in Southeast but wanted to be thoughtful about the process,” says Abby Fenton, Whitman-Walker Health’s chief external officer. “We wanted to make sure we are complimenting and adding to the list of providers, and I think we really are.”

Fenton says that the Max Robinson Center is maxed out in terms of expansion—there’s no space for more dental chairs, exam rooms, or research, all of which can be housed in the new space. Additionally, Whitman-Walker’s youth programs are currently located in rented rooms in Eastern Market, and the Congress Heights location will allow them to commingle these services, which serves the strategic advantage of trying to more easily transition participants in the youth program into their primary care offerings, Fenton says. Two other community non-profits will also be in the building, though Fenton says they’re not ready to announce their names.

Whitman-Walker is working with the D.C. government, which owns the property, and developer Redbrick to build out the property. The non-profit expects the facility to open in 2023.

The funding for the project is possible thanks to Whitman-Walker’s newly opened 14th Street NW apartment building, Liz. The organization redeveloped its longtime headquarters into a block-long mixed-use facility that includes healthcare and community spaces, along with residential and retail offerings (like Sephora and reportedly an Amazon storefront) that provide another income stream.

Fenton compares the gleaming new facilities on 14th Street NW and the decades-old offerings in Anacostia, which underlines the non-profit’s desire to expand its offerings east of the river. “If you look at the facilities in Northwest versus the facilities in Southeast, we just have a long way to go and we know that,” she says. “We’re going to have the ability to produce facilities that look and feel a lot more like the facilities we have in Northwest.”

Indeed, access to healthcare in Ward 8 has long been lacking, contributing to the higher rates of illness in that ward compared to the rest of the city. Life expectancy in some parts of Ward 8 is 72 years, compared to 87 years in the wealthier Ward 3, according to a 2018 report.

John Falcicchio, the interim deputy mayor for planning and economic development, says he sees the forthcoming Whitman-Walker facility as contributing to develop a more diverse “healthcare ecosystem” in Ward 8.

“What we need to do is break the model that people go to the emergency room as their primary care provider,” Falcicchio says, adding that “having a respected provider like Whitman-Walker in Ward 8” will give people more options for medical attention. (At first, he says, the parcel of land was intended as office space to bring daytime use, and there had been discussions about putting D.C. government offices there, but “having a private user is exciting, and having a healthcare provider going to Ward 8 really means a lot.”)

Falcicchio says that Mayor Muriel Bowser is hoping to make more announcements soon about healthcare providers east of the river. “A great thing too is that in a few years there will also be a hospital on the campus,” he says.

There’s been a long-simmering plan for a new hospital on the St. Elizabeths campus, which would replace the only hospital currently in Southeast—United Medical Center, which has dealt with debilitating management issues and medical mistakes. UMC had to shut down its obstetrics unit in 2017, leaving people in wards 7 and 8 without a nearby hospital for delivering babies. But Falcicchio is confident that the deal, which was halted last year amid new amendments at the D.C. Council, is back on track.

Ward 7 Councilmember Vincent Gray, who chairs the health committee, is similarly assured that the deal for the hospital will move forward. He told DCist earlier this week that he expects the mayor’s team to transmit the plan to the council in the coming weeks.

Fenton says that Whitman-Walker looks forward to working with other providers in the area. “In the interim, we need to do more work getting to know the community, getting to know what they need, what they want, making sure what we’re proposing doesn’t already exist somewhere else,” she says. “We know we have to introduce ourselves to folks—Congress Heights is a different neighborhood than Anacostia.”

For now, Whitman-Walker isn’t yet sure about what will happen to the Max Robinson Center (the healthcare provider owns the property). The board will determine that in the years to come.

This past January, Whitman-Walker began operating under a new, model that splits its work into two co-equal branches: one of which involves clinical operations, while the other houses its educational programs, research programs, and advocacy work.

“We’ve always been advocates—that’s how we started,” says Fenton. The LGBT health care non-profit began more than four decades ago as one of the first places providing care to people with HIV/AIDs. Currently, it counts 1,800 trans residents among its patients. “Under this new model, we’ll be able to expand our operations and what we can do.”

Natalie Delgadillo contributed reporting.