There is a brand-new bend in the road for Dr. Rebecca Hoffman at Cherry Bend Family Care in Elmwood Township. Hoffman, a family doctor who has operated her small practice in the county for 16 years, tells the Leelanau Ticker she is launching a separate venture next door, Cherry Bend Health & Wellness. 

“We just redid our office and opened a new weight loss and aesthetics clinic. I am still running my family practice office, and this is a separate entity,” she says.

The clinic, with five employees and Hoffman as the medical director, opened this month to the public.

Hoffman purchased the entire building where she practices family medicine from her long-term landlord during the pandemic, and, at first, used the vacated next-door office an impromptu COVID vaccine clinic.

The space has now been completely redesigned (by Environment Architects right next door) in both look and purpose, spurred on by the after-effects of the pandemic.

“In general, it was high-stress and people not taking care of themselves and holding on to all this negativity. We said, well, ‘let’s do stuff that makes people actually feel really good about themselves,’ but with medical grade products and medically trained staff.”

She adds, “We’re here to make you feel better about yourself, not to make you feel bad about yourself.”

The clinic soft launched with some of her staff and current patients, most seeking medical weight-loss. “When it comes to weight loss especially, there’s a lot more to it than just, ‘here’s some injections and go on to diet.’ We want you to feel like we’re helping you through the process. All of this is meant to help your long-term health.” She adds, “People ask me about their weight all the time and they ask me about all manner of skin stuff. Now I can refer them here, and we’re the only place in Leelanau County that is doing this.”

The new clinic also offers injectables, peels and facials, micro-needling, and body sculpting.

Hoffman and her staff members attended an aesthetics conference in Arizona, “where there was one of these clinics, literally every 50 feet. They taught us, and then we went to Grand Rapids and did more fine-tuned training with a practitioner who has been doing this for 20 years and whose clinic is similarly small.”

Some of her staff (pictured above) will work at both practices: “Even in the pandemic when we were doing the vaccine clinics,  we just worked really well together. When we try something, we roll up our sleeves and we just do it.”

Family medical care continues apace next door, “I like our team and I like a small office. That was kind of what we always wanted to be. I want people to know that I’m still going to be their family doctor. This is just another addition to what we can bring to our community.”

Another wellness-based expansion in the county: Danielle Schmidt, operator of Gateway Fitness Gym at Leelanau Studios (the converted elementary school on Cherry Bend Road), has taken over ownership of Northport Fitness, inside the historic Northport Inn property.

On June 1 Schmidt opened her 24/7 fitness facility to members. “The Northport club will operate the same as Gateway Fitness Gym, but on this end of the peninsula. It’s a high-quality fitness facility, with new equipment and safe 24-hour entry,” she says.

Previous owner/operator and certified personal trainer Jeanette Egeler, “is still here working at the inn, and doing her classes three days a week,” says Schmidt. “We’re super excited to be part of the Northport Inn, connected with The Union restaurant in Northport. Together we’ve turned a beautiful historical building into a lively little spot with live jazz in the evenings, a sunny, flowering courtyard...hotel suites with the highest lake views in Northport, and now a 24-hour fitness facility,” she noted on her website.