SCARBOROUGH – Medical services provider InterMed held a groundbreaking ceremony for its newest facility in Scarborough’s Downs project Thursday.

The company, which already operates out of four other locations in Portland, South Portland and Yarmouth, is beginning work on a 62,000 square-foot medical office building and surgery center.

CEO Roger Poitras said it will offer everything from imaging services such as MRI, CT and ultrasound scans to surgery suites to family medicine to an urgent care center.

“It basically is kind of all the services that a community like Scarborough really could benefit from,” he said. 

This groundbreaking is the latest on the Downs, a multimillion-dollar development project in the center of Scarborough. Since 2018, the project has added housing at multiple income levels. Companies such as membership retailer Costco, medical device manufacturer IDEXX and Allagash Brewing Company have all built or plan on opening locations in the Downs area.

Thursday’s groundbreaking took place in a section of the overall project that will represent a new downtown area for Scarborough. Nearby, the grocery store chain Market Basket is planning to build a store, with Allagash planning to open a brew pub just up the street. The vision, developers have said, is to build a community center, complete with town green, based on multiple conversations with local residents and officials.

April Sither, chair of the Scarborough Town Council, said she thinks InterMed’s new facility will help address the medical needs of local residents.

“To have a facility that will serve such a broad base of our community is really so exciting and important,” she said. 

Developers at the ceremony said they expect work to take about 18 months.