New ProHealth Urgent Care Opens Near East Avenue Roundabout, Reachable By Only One Approach

WAUKESHA — ProHealth Care opened a new urgent-care clinic Tuesday in a second-floor suite at Grandview Medical Plaza, placing it roughly 200 yards from the East Avenue roundabout that has stumped local drivers since it opened eighteen months ago, and reachable, per the leasing paperwork, by only the roundabout's west approach lane.

The clinic occupies 3,100 square feet above a shuttered vitamin shop and will be staffed by four providers on rotating twelve-hour shifts, according to a ProHealth Care release. The company's statewide expansion plan calls for twelve new urgent-care locations by next spring, two of them in Waukesha County.

A Test Run That Didn't Quite Work

ProHealth sent a staff volunteer to attempt the drive from the Highway 59 on-ramp Monday as a dry run before opening day. The volunteer, 34-year-old scheduling coordinator Paul Resnick, circled the roundabout three times, took the wrong exit twice, and arrived 22 minutes later at the Waukesha Public Library two blocks away, where he said a reference librarian offered him a printed map of downtown and a bottle of water.

"I had the address typed into two different apps and they disagreed with each other for about a block and a half," Resnick said. "One of them wanted me to make a left that doesn't exist anymore."

ProHealth Says The Location Still Makes Sense

ProHealth site planning liaison Denise Kowalczyk defended the location, saying the plaza scored well on foot traffic studies conducted before the roundabout's tree canopy fully grew in. She said the canopy, now mature, has since been flagged internally as a factor in GPS signal loss along the suite's western face.

"We did the walk score, we did the drive-time radius, we did everything the real estate team asks for. Nobody modeled for the trees winning."

— Denise Kowalczyk, ProHealth site planning liaison

Kowalczyk said the clinic's intake desk has started keeping a dry-erase board with hand-drawn directions for patients calling ahead, listing the west approach lane, the correct exit count, and a note reading "NOT the library." She said the board gets updated roughly once a week as staff learn new ways patients have gotten lost.

Patients Weigh In

Marlene Odegaard, 58, said she found the clinic Wednesday afternoon for a suspected sprained wrist after missing the turn twice and pulling into the library parking lot by habit, since she said that's where "everybody ends up anyway." She said a library staffer recognized her description of the clinic immediately and pointed her back out toward the roundabout without needing to ask which business she meant.

"She didn't even look it up," Odegaard said. "She just said, 'west lane, second floor, past the vitamin place,' like she'd said it fifteen times that day."

City officials have previously floated awarding a symbolic key to the city to the first driver who navigates the roundabout correctly on the first attempt. As of Wednesday, no recipient had been identified, though Councilman Gary Puchalski said at a recent public works meeting that he personally has not attempted it by car since the ribbon-cutting and instead parks near the library and walks.

A Map At The Door

ProHealth has ordered a laminated directional sign for the clinic's street-level entrance showing the roundabout, the west approach lane, and an arrow pointing away from the library, which Kowalczyk said should be installed by the end of the month. In the meantime, patients calling to confirm appointments are told to allow an extra fifteen minutes and to ignore any navigation prompt suggesting a left turn near the old vitamin shop sign, which still has not been removed from the building's facade.

The clinic will hold open hours seven days a week starting this weekend. ProHealth said a second new Waukesha County location, on a more conventional stretch of Highway 164, is expected to open without incident sometime next month.