Everett Clinic to move out of Trask building downtown

EVERETT — The Everett Clinic plans to conduct its final surgery Friday — a lymph node biopsy — at the Trask Surgery Center in downtown.

For 15 years, the clinic has performed about 6,000 a surgeries a year at the three-story, 31,000-square-foot building at 3025 Rucker Ave.

Now, the clinic is consolidating all of its outpatient surgeries at the Kemp Surgery Center at its main campus in the Gunderson Building at 3927 Rucker Ave.

“We left the Trask Building to provide more modern and convenient surgery facilities for our patients and to align with our standards for clinical excellence,” said Dr. Jeff Bissey, The Everett Clinic’s chief operating officer. “A nearly 100-year-old building was no longer ideal.”

The Everett Clinic has added Saturday hours and evening hours at the Kemp Surgery Center. The clinic plans to renovate that center within a year, adding more operating rooms.

The Trask building was built in 1918. Before it was a surgery center, it housed an auto mechanic in the 1930s and ’40s. Later, it was home to manufacturers, including Goldfinch Bros., the commercial and residential glass business, which continues to operate in downtown Everett.

The Trask building became the Everett Surgical Center in 1984. The Everett Clinic opened the Trask Surgery Center in 2001.

The surgery center was named after Everett surgeons, father and son, Leo and Charles Trask.

Leo Trask, a World War I veteran, was one of the founding members of The Everett Clinic in 1924 and practiced with the clinic until 1959.

His son, Charles, a former U.S. Army medical officer, practiced at the clinic for more than 20 years before retiring in 1993.

The Everett Clinic employed 42 people at the Trask building — less than half of the 130 people who work in outpatient surgery for the clinic. The building houses three operating rooms and one procedure room.

The clinic owns the Trask building and has put it on the market. A buyer hasn’t been found yet.