Photo: Roundtable Hosting by Melanie Lucero and Michael Boyce; Taken by John Heishman

For years, Lake Anna residents have voiced a pressing concern: access to medical care. With the nearest hospitals 45 to 60 minutes away, medical emergencies often turn into life-or-death situations. Despite overwhelming community demand, efforts to establish an urgent care facility in the area have repeatedly hit a wall. The reason? Not enough people.

But that hasn’t stopped local leaders, business owners, and volunteers from fighting for a solution. For Melanie Lucero and Michael Boyce, the husband-and-wife real estate team behind the new 208 New Bridge development, the issue is personal.

“My husband had a heart attack years ago,” Lucero shared about an experience he had in Chantilly, Virginia. “He didn’t think anything was wrong at first, but he went to an urgent care facility just in case. They figured it out immediately, called an ambulance, and he got to the hospital in time for life-saving surgery.”

“I probably would have died if I was here (at Lake Anna),” reflected Boyce. Many other residents know that the absence of medical facilities at Lake Anna has had real consequences.

In 2024, The Breeze conducted a Needs Assessment Survey, revealing that healthcare access is the community’s #1 infrastructure concern. Respondents overwhelmingly cited long travel times to hospitals as a major issue, with urgent care facilities ranking as the top requested addition to the area.

The push for urgent care isn’t new. According to Louisa County Supervisor Duane Adams, he has been working on this issue for eight years, holding multiple meetings each year with different healthcare providers.

“We just don’t have the population,” Adams said. “Urgent care has been a priority of mine, but we will never get a freestanding emergency room in our lifetime at Lake Anna. It requires a certificate of need from the state, and that is a long and arduous process. The reason we will never get one is because we don’t have the numbers, population, or traffic that would be able to sustain an urgent care facility.”
Adams explained that many major providers have looked at Lake Anna—Bon Secours, UVA, HCA, Mary Washington, and MedExpress—and they’ve all turned the area down for the same reason: the numbers don’t work.

“I have worked very hard over the last eight years to find a funding source to entice a true urgent care center, without using taxpayer dollars,” Adams said. He has proposed tax abatements and financial incentives to make urgent care more feasible. Company 8, a fire and rescue station at Lake Anna, would be the ideal location, but it would cost between $5-6 million to staff, build, and equip a facility there.
Despite what the numbers suggest, many Lake Anna residents believe an urgent care facility would thrive. That’s why Lucero and Boyce are pushing for a more realistic first step: an urgent care facility within their upcoming commercial development off New Bridge Road, less than a mile from Company 8, which is one of the area’s busiest corridors.

Their plan? Build it, then find a provider willing to grow with the community.

“This development will have 90,000 square feet of (a variety of) commercial spaces,” Boyce said. “We’re signing leases and we’re actively searching for medical tenants. But no one is going to come here unless it’s financially viable.”

On February 18th, Lucero and Boyce held a community roundtable discussion on the issue, urging residents to sign a digital petition to demonstrate demand for an urgent care facility at Lake Anna. The meeting, held at Belmont Community Center, brought together local members of the community to discuss potential solutions and next steps.

Many attendees shared personal stories about long wait times for ambulances, delayed care due to travel distances, and how a nearby urgent care facility could have made a difference in critical situations. Others expressed concerns about the growing retiree population in the area and the lack of accessible healthcare for aging residents.

“We’re not just talking about convenience,” Boyce told the crowd. “We’re talking about saving lives.”
Lucero emphasized that community involvement is crucial in persuading providers to consider Lake Anna despite the low population numbers.

“If we can show them that the demand is real and the community is behind this, we have a much stronger case,” she explained. “We know the population numbers don’t look ideal on paper, but real people need real care. Overwhelming community support could be the key to making this happen.”
Kimberly Wolfe, a Spotsylvania resident and volunteer with the Lake Anna Civic Association (LACA), has spent years working on the issue. She’s met with Spotsylvania and Louisa County officials and led discussions on how to attract providers.

“We don’t want to be another Route 3,” Wolfe said, referring to Fredericksburg’s heavily commercialized highway, which has seen multiple new freestanding Emergency Rooms open in recent years. “But we need an urgent care facility.”

Some point to the Lake Anna Veterinary Clinic, which stays consistently busy with pet care. “If a vet clinic can make it, imagine what an urgent care facility could do,” Wolfe added. “This isn’t about money—it’s about sustainability. A freestanding emergency department would be the bomb, but at this point, I’ll take anything.”

Unlike other up and coming potential developments, like the ‘Gateway Project’ which is connected to the new roundabout at Wares Crossroads—not to be confused with the new Roundabout Plaza which has already broken ground—the Lucero-Boyce development has made some progress in their conversations with medical providers, promising to complete their development project within the year, aiming to bring some form of medical to 208 by 2026.

As discussions continue, the question remains whether Lake Anna’s population growth and community advocacy will be enough to attract a medical provider willing to invest in the area.

With limited healthcare options currently available, the push for urgent care reflects a broader challenge faced by many rural and semi-rural communities—how to balance financial viability with essential public services. The outcome of these efforts could determine whether Lake Anna sees medical access improvements in the near future or if residents will continue to rely on distant facilities for critical care.

Jen Bailey

Hi! I’m Jennifer Bailey and I partner with entrepreneurs who have massive ideas that could change the world. Most marketing is meaningless. Filled with empty promises, its only job is to bring in new traffic, new leads, and new customers. But I’ve drawn a line in the sand, and I’ve learned that marketing can do so much more than reach business goals and build profit. My methods give businesses the fire and soul they need to reach the right people, set the groundwork for sustainable relationships, and offer true value to the people on both the giving and receiving ends of marketing.

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