Final site plans for a new comprehensive dental care center slated for development in Flossmoor gained village board approval this month. The Center for Dental Excellence (CDE) will construct a 4,000-square-foot addition to expand its existing practice at 19615 Governors Highway.
Final site plans for a new comprehensive dental care center slated for development in Flossmoor gained village board approval this month.
The Center for Dental Excellence (CDE) will construct a 4,000-square-foot addition to expand its existing practice at 19615 Governors Highway. Most locals know it as the building fronted by a large electronic sign topped with a yellow toothbrush.
Pending the clearance of some county and state administrative issues, construction should begin in early June, according to marketing director Lori Tozer. The new one-and-a-half-story addition is expected to open by December, she said.
Bank drive-through is
slated to be demolished
as part of Center for Dental
Excellence’s planned
expansion. (Chronicle
file photo)
The village board approved CDE’s plan at its May 7 meeting. The Flossmoor Plan Commission had previously reviewed the plans and unanimously approved them, subject to a final engineering review.
CDE’s owners, Dr. Cary Goldberg and Dr. Charles Greenebaum, said the expansion will create the first fully comprehensive dental practice in the South Suburbs, offering oral surgery, orthodontics, periodontics, endodontics and more.
Instead of having to visit a different office for specialty services, dental patients can get treatment right at CDE, Goldberg said. They won’t have to travel to a new office, meet new doctors, fill out different forms or worry about back-and-forth communications.
“It’s also going to benefit patients from a planning and diagnosis perspective,” Goldberg said. “Now, all specialties can work together to coordinate the patient’s care, more like in a hospital setting.”
Dentists can get used to working in “cubby holes,” he said, and don’t have the advantage of working with colleagues, which benefits both their professional lives and the patient experience. Greenebaum said closer coordination of care is even more important for older adults, who may require frequent visits or extensive treatment.
“Especially as people get older, their cases become much more complex,” Greenebaum said. “They want to have a great quality of life and their dental health is a huge part of that.”
Both Goldberg’s and Greenebaum’s fathers were dentists in the Homewood-Flossmoor area, and both men attended Homewood-Flossmoor High School, though years apart. They finally met on a Metra Electric train and struck up a friendship. They eventually closed their individual practices and opened the Center for Dental Excellence in Flossmoor in 1999.
It was a few years ago when the two men started developing the idea for the expanded practice. Now that concrete construction plans are coming into focus, they’re close to seeing a groundbreaking for what was once their joint vision.
According to Tozer, the project marks much more than a business expansion for the two doctors. It’s a symbol of their larger commitment to the H-F community.
“Their vision is to have a tremendous impact, not only on their patients, but on their team members, team members’ families and their community,” Tozer said.
“It’s not only a vision of getting our patients the best dental care possible, but the legacy they leave,” she said. “They want to be able to invest in team members to grow professional and personally. The better we do, the more we can support our community.”
To accommodate the addition, the former Great Lakes Bank building to the north of the Center will be demolished. The existing CDE building will remain open during construction. Once the new space opens for business, Tozer said the existing office will close for three months for a complete remodeling.
When the entire practice reopens Tozer said they expect to be able to accommodate double the number of patients with a greatly expanded staff. In the meantime, the CDE team looks forward to the day when they can offer patients all their dental services, all under one roof.
“To be able to keep them here where they are known will be a tremendous benefit to them,” Tozer said. “We aim to be a pain-free practice, not just relieving physical pain, but also the pain of hassle and wasted time. We’re going for pain-free on every level.”
