By EMILY SPARACINO / Staff Writer

CHELSEA – Lemak Sports Medicine and Orthopedics will open its second Shelby County location in Chelsea in the next two months.

The new clinic will share the former Cadence Bank branch building off U.S. 280, next to Sonic Drive-In, with Drayer Physical Therapy, and will offer the same multidisciplinary musculoskeletal services to patients age 8-88 in the Chelsea area as the other Lemak clinic in Alabaster.

“We are a very patient-centered organization,” Chief Executive Officer Matthew Lemak said. “Nobody likes coming to the doctor. Our goal is to make it easy and convenient for those patients to get to us.”

The Lemak side will be called “Lemak Health,” the name the company is converting to as part of a rebranding process.

Lemak purchased the building from Cadence Bank in April, marking the company’s third bank branch conversion for a clinic, Lemak said.

In 2010, Lemak converted a former SouthTrust branch across from Shelby Baptist Medical Center on U.S. 31 in Alabaster into a clinic.

“The structure gives us a lot of flexibility to get what we need,” Lemak said, noting physical therapy gyms and treatment areas are facets of each clinic that fit well into a bank building layout. “We like to be in the community that we serve, and we like to be close to our patients. It was economically and structurally a good building for us, but the market was already there for us, and we like to be next to retail settings.”

Lemak said the freestanding building also offers patients with mobility concerns surface-level access to the facility, along with free parking.

“Patients don’t want to pay for parking at a hospital campus,” Lemak said. “A lot of patients have an acute injury and they don’t want to move much. We are not currently on any hospital campus.”

The clinic is roughly 6,000 square feet and will include six exam rooms, a 3,000-square-foot physical therapy and athletic performance gym, digital X-ray and diagnostic ultrasound, a standard offering at Lemak clinic sites.

The Chelsea clinic will be a more convenient location for many current patients, including Chelsea and Vincent high school students, Lemak said.

“We cover every Shelby County school from a sports medicine perspective,” he said.

Drayer Physical Therapy in Chelsea is expected to open the last week of August, and Lemak will follow at the end of the first week of September, Lemak said.

Birmingham-based Hendon + Huckestein Architects, Gonzalez-Strength and Associates in Hoover and D.L. Action Construction in Pelham are involved in the project, Lemak said.

The clinic is starting to hire for positions. Job inquiries can be emailed to hr@lemakhealth.com.

Patient appointments can be made by calling 358-9120.

The clinic is located at 104 Chelsea Point Drive.

“For us, it’s about making sure patients get back to life as quickly as possible,” Lemak said. “It’s a nice way to give back.”