The future Columbia Memorial Hospital clinic at the Seaside Outlet Mall.

SEASIDE — Work is underway on a new Columbia Memorial Hospital primary care and urgent care clinic at the former sites of Dress Barn and Toys R Us at the Seaside Outlet Mall.

Erik Thorsen, the hospital’s CEO, said in a statement that the last community health needs assessment showed a need to do more to meet the demand for primary care services. With patients in Seaside, Cannon Beach and farther south, he said it “just makes sense to the board to build a clinic in Seaside.”

The hospital opened its first primary care clinic in the Warrenton Highlands shopping center in 2013 and added another clinic in Astoria’s Park Medical Building last year.

The Knight Cancer Collaborative, a partnership with Oregon Health & Science University for chemotherapy and radiation therapy, opened in 2017 next to the hospital’s main campus in Astoria.

The new clinic in Seaside will follow the model of the hospital’s Warrenton clinic, offering primary care, urgent care and some diagnostics, such as X-rays and labs, according to Felicia Struve, the hospital’s marketing and communications director.