Tender Gifts’ plans changed for the better

Tim Harty, The Business Times

Last March, Tender Gifts Birth & Wellness Center thought it was going to reside in the building that previously housed Bloomin’ Babies, anticipating a May 2025 move-in.

That didn’t happen, but it worked out for the best. Later this month, Tender Gifts will finish moving into a much larger, better-appointed building.

Intermountain Health Bloomin’ Babies Birth Center had resided at 2241 N. Seventh St. until Intermountain Health decided to close the birth center, effective March 28, 2025, citing “steadily declining birth rates in Mesa County and unsustainable decreases in the number of new patients.”

A birth center moving into the space used by another birth center made a lot of sense to Tender Gifts owner Althea Hrdlichka, who also owns and operates a Tender Gifts in Fort Collins.

But when Hrdlichka found out renovations – installing birthing tubs and birth slings in the client rooms among them – were going to cost considerably more than she anticipated, the location lost its luster.

“We decided to just go ahead and find a new location and build out from basically scratch, so that’s what we did,” Hrdlichka said.

That ended up being at 360 W. Park Drive, Suite 105, on the west end of a building neighboring McAlister’s Deli.

Hrdlichka went with Vanderbuilt Solutions for the buildout as its owner, Lindsay VanderVelde, is the son of Karin VanderVelde, who is the clinical director for Grand Junction’s Tender Gifts Birth & Wellness Center.

While the renovation was being done, Tender Gifts occupied an office at 529 25 1/2 Road, Suite B-108, in Independence Plaza, and did home births.

“I think we’ve had 14 babies so far, and they’ve all been home births,” Hrdlichka said. “We have a lot of clients already.”

Just as the reason for Bloomin’ Babies closure didn’t faze Hrdlichka last year, it doesn’t faze her now.

“A couple months back, we did a soft opening when we walked everyone through the space when the walls were up, and it was an overwhelming amount of people,” she said. “I think we ended up with 350 people that came through, and so I know this is such a need for this community.

“And we are Medicaid providers as well, and so that’s a huge demographic of people that we will be able to serve, which is amazing. One of the very few birth centers, including my birth center in Fort Collins, that actually take Medicaid and does not cap Medicaid clients, which is almost unheard of anymore.

“The community, it’s just been awesome, so we’re super, super excited.”

Most of the moving into the new location will take place Feb. 12-17, and sometime soon after that, Hrdlichka said, Tender Gifts will have an open house. Anyone who attended the soft-opening walkthrough won’t have to imagine what the finished rooms will look like this time.

Because the West Park Drive location is twice as large as the one Tender Gifts walked away from, it will offer more amenities. For instance, there are three rooms with birthing tubs instead of just two. There’s an ultrasound room. There will be rooms for other businesses to lease office space, such as the one Montag Physical Therapy already has claimed.

And there’s one in particular that Hrdlichka wants to bring on board.

“We’ll be looking for a family nurse practitioner,” she said, “so we’ll do primary care eventually.”

There’s also a classroom that she said Tender Gifts will use to host events or open it to the public to rent for events.