For years, staff at the Vashon Health Center has struggled with cramped quarters at Sunrise Ridge, where their floor-to-ceiling stacks of charts are stored in three separate locations and doctors have to share their offices with one another.

Now, the health center — Vashon’s largest clinic — is about to undertake a small but significant remodel that will transform a section of the building that’s currently underused into a new wing, replete with exam rooms, staff offices, additional storage and other amenities.

And it comes just in time, says clinic manager Rita Cannell. In a month, a new physician — Dr. Jeffrey HansPetersen of Gainesville, Fla. — will join the practice.

The arrival of HansPetersen — the clinic’s sixth medical provider — would have compromised the small clinic’s already stressed operations, were it not for the remodel, Cannell said.

“It’ll improve the efficiency of the entire office,” Cannell said.

“You’re not going to see big differences. All of these are little changes that will improve our working lives here,” she added.

The health center, initially located in a house in Burton, was established more than 35 years ago, after a group of Islanders founded it as a nonprofit in an effort to ensure Islanders could obtain adequate medical services on Vashon. It moved to Sunrise Ridge about 31 years ago, and for years, staff has struggled to make the space — former barracks from the days when Sunrise Ridge was part of a Nike Missile complex — accommodate their growing practice.

Over the years, the clinic’s employees have pinned their dreams for a new building onto efforts that didn’t materialize — a public hospital district that voters defeated four years ago, for instance, and the possibility of moving to the K2 Commons project, now on hold.

With the decision to hire a new doctor, staff realized they had to take matters into their own hands, Cannell said, “and we all started brainstorming about what we could do.” In the process, they came up with a plan, largely driven by staff walking into what’s long been called the “back alley” and dreaming about transforming the clinic’s north wing into more usable space.

With plans in hand, Cannell brought her vision to the board of directors at Granny’s Attic, which provides financial support to health care efforts on Vashon. The board readily agreed, Cannell said.

As a result, Granny’s has donated $31,000 to the effort — $20,000 to pay for the remodel and $11,000 to furnish the new exam rooms and offices.

Donna Klemka, who chairs the Granny’s board, said she and her colleagues found Cannell’s presentation compelling. Clinics are closing all over the country, she noted. After Cannell’s pitch, the Granny’s board realized that with a modest infusion of money, it could make a significant contribution at the small, bustling clinic.

“It’s compelling for us when we can so clearly see a need that we’re able to fill. … We want to keep the health center vital and attractive and a place where Islanders can get their health needs met,” Klemka added.

The health center’s building is owned by a nonprofit, Sunrise Ridge Health Services, which owns the 14-acre campus where the clinic is located. The board has explored the possibility of constructing a new state-of-the-art building for the health center, but because of the economy, the project has been put on hold, said Kate Hunter, a member of the Sunrise Ridge board.

The Sunrise Ridge board is now fully embracing this project, Hunter said, overseeing and assisting the health center in bringing the plans to fruition.

“I feel very good about it. We’re showing some good faith to the docs. We want to keep them here,” Hunter said. “One of my doctors is one of the doctors at the health center, and I love him. I want him to be happy.”

The north wing has not been standing empty all these years. It currently houses a couple of speciality rooms — a room for doctors to put casts on patients and another room for sigmoidoscopies, a way to examine patients’ colons. But such procedures are rare anymore; most patients get colonoscopies, Cannell said. And even casts are not so common; more often, people with broken bones get boots or other similar therapeutic devices.

So the clinic is giving up both rooms and transforming them into exam rooms; the clinic will bring in a mobile cast unit to serve those patients who need traditional casts, Cannell added. The plans also include new office space for Dr. Gary Koch, who has been at the clinic since 1979 and currently shares his office with Dr. Kim Farrell. Koch will share his new space with his medical assistant, Cannell said.

The wing has thick cement walls that will make some of the work tricky, she added. Making the place look cozy, for instance, may be tough.

But staff will join in the effort, as they already have, and several employees will participate in painting and other efforts to beautify the space, Cannell said.

“This is only a Band-Aid. It’s not the solution to our needs,” Cannell said. “But it’s a Band-Aid that’s going to help us for the next couple of years.”