JET physical therapy buys new building

WASHINGTON — A Washington-based physical therapy center hopes to move into a new space within the year, after JET Physical Therapy announced the purchase of a former Dollar General building on East Washington Street.

Co-owner Eric Turner said the new space had around 7,000 square feet to work with, compared to the current building’s 2,800.

“We’ve grown over time, and our current space, with both number of staff members and number of services, there’s some days or different time periods during the day where things are getting tighter,” he said. “We just need more space for our existing services, and for services that we don’t have.”

Turner said physical therapy as a practice had evolved since the current building opened in 1998. Modern techniques put greater emphasis on physical activity and task simulation than older ones, like electro-stimulation and ultrasound tests.

Those new methods, however, require more room to move around.

“People are being more active, carrying, lifting, doing things that weren’t quite as-utilized strategies 25 years ago,” Turner said. “And now, this is our model … where there’s more of an active approach the whole time.”

The extra room comes with added amenities as well. Turner said the service would expand to include a multipurpose space that could accommodate sports performance and workers comp needs.

The business will also add a membership service for patients who complete their care, but need continued access to equipment and activities. Those clients could use the multipurpose space and get regular check-ins, even though they’d no longer need over-the-shoulder supervision.

“We want to be able to sustain and keep them at their highest possible level,” Turner said. “For them to go and get a Y membership and be totally unsupervised, one they’re probably not going to do it. And two, are they as safe in that environment as when they’re still around medical care?”

New staff are a likely possibility in the larger building as well. Turner said the center would add a weight-loss coach, a service it has provided in the past but does not currently have. Other openings are within the realm of possibility, depending on how the team settles into its new space.

Turner said staff hoped to move into the building as early as this fall, assuming everything stays on schedule. The property will require internal construction to shift from a retail function into a therapy-oriented one.

“Right now, the building is almost just a shell, there are some walls for an office, bathroom, storage area,” he said. “Those will be knocked down, we will have office spaces, lobby, all the traditional things. We’ll have treatment areas that are three-sided walls but open on one end … in the center will be kind of a gym space that will be almost the size of our building that we have now.”

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