For more than a decade, the veterinarian came to you. Starting this fall, Port Washington can come to the veterinarian.

Dr. Kristen Andersen-Mercer, who has run the house call practice Veterinarian on Wheels since 2015, is opening Clover Bay Animal Hospital at 150 Bayview Avenue in Port Washington. The new practice was registered with the state on June 23 at the Bayview Avenue address, and the practice has said it expects to open in September once final approvals are in hand.

It is a growth story with the usual direction reversed. Rather than a storefront practice going mobile to chase clients, this is a mobile practice that found so many clients it needs a building, and the vet putting her name on it grew up in the town it will serve.

A decade of driveway medicine

Veterinarian on Wheels was registered with the state in May 2015 and has spent the decade since as exactly what the name promises: a full service mobile practice that examines pets in their own homes across Port Washington, Manhasset, Great Neck, Roslyn, Plandome, Sands Point and Roslyn Heights. Checkups, dental work, senior care and blood pressure monitoring happen at the curb; surgeries run through partner offices.

The model found its audience. The practice says it now serves on the order of 1,300 client households, growth it attributes mostly to word of mouth, and that demand for appointments eventually outran what a vehicle based practice could hold while keeping visits unhurried. The hospital is the answer to that arithmetic: more room, more staff, and a fixed address, without giving up the thing that built the client list. The practice has said existing house call clients will keep their home visit service after Clover Bay opens.

Andersen-Mercer is a third generation Port Washington resident who grew up between Roslyn and Port Washington, took a biochemistry degree at Hofstra, and earned her veterinary doctorate at Iowa State in 2006. She co-founded the mobile practice with Cody Mercer, who manages the business side. The announced hospital team is three veterinarians and nine support staff, several of whom have been with the mobile practice for years.

What Clover Bay will be

The hospital's building sits on Bayview Avenue, in the stretch that runs along Manhasset Bay toward the town dock. The practice has said the hospital will use fear free handling, the approach built around keeping animals calm through a visit rather than restraining them through it, and has announced a pair of community commitments: a discount for active Port Washington fire department and local law enforcement members, and a deeper discount for rescue animals through a partnership with Second Chance Rescue.

The hospital's website is a construction page for now, and the opening date is not yet a hard one; September is the practice's stated target, contingent on final approvals. Anyone with a pet in the peninsula's orbit has a reason to watch for the doors to open: a new full service animal hospital does not arrive in Port Washington often, and this one arrives already knowing a fair fraction of the town's dogs by name.

Why it matters beyond the pet owners

Bayview Avenue gets a new working storefront, and the town gets the version of a business expansion that keeps its character: the same person who spent ten years in local driveways, now with an exam table that does not fold. The house calls continue, the hospital adds capacity, and a practice that could have sold its client list to a chain built a building instead.