For members of two therapy and fitness centers, things are aboutto get pretty interesting.

King’s Daughters Medical Center recently bought out the HumanPerformance Center and took ownership of the building on Friday,leaving quite a few people to wonder what exactly the combinationprocess of the two will involve.

KDMC Therapy and Fitness Director Christi Mills, most members ofthe Human Performance Center and King’s Daughters Medical Centerfitness facilities will not necessarily be immediately affected.Therapy and aerobics, however, will be.

“Temporarily we will stay split up, and have two fitness centersand one for therapy, for about two months,” Mills said, adding thatthe therapy and aerobics will be moved to the old HPC building at300 Highway 51 North, and will open on Monday at 5 a.m.

In the meantime, she said, both HPC members and KDMC members willcontinue to do their workouts at their respective locations untilthe KDMC fitness facility will move across the highway to the newlyacquired building. Therapy services will be moved back to the KDMCcampus.

“What we’re doing is expanding because we need space, and we’vemaxed out our present location,” Mills said. “The new building willbe all fitness by the end of the summer. In 60 days all the therapywill be in the KDMC building.”

Meanwhile, Human Performance Center therapy patients will relocateto the new facility under the new name Physiotherapy Associates.The new therapy center will be located where Betty Ann’s formerlywas on Brookway Boulevard.

“I was ready to get out of the fitness business, and talked to KDMCabout merging the two to keep a really nice fitness center here intown,” said Human Performance Company owner Richard Barker. “I feltthat together we could have a better facility and programs andthings, so we sold them the fitness center.”

Barker is also the Mississippi Group Director for PhysiotherapyAssociates, which he said is the second-largest therapy provider inthe country. He said he thinks the move will be a real positive forhis patients.

“It’s good for us, it’s a neat environment over here where we are,these shops are nice, and offer things for the patient’s family,”he said. “While they’re doing their therapy, their family has nicelittle stores where they can go shop.”

Mills said the KDMC therapy building will be renovated over aperiod of 60 days, and when it’s finished, it will be 9,000 squarefeet dedicated to therapy.

“This will be one of the largest and nicest therapy centers inMississippi, and we’re so excited because we think the communitywill love it,” she said. “And once we move the therapy out of thenew building, we’ll be renovating it also.”

The new fitness facilities will include not only new equipment, butalso a new indoor walking track, Mills said.

“We’ve been so crowded, and therapy outgrew its space a long timeago, it’s going to be a nicer and more spacious environment, andmore state of the art,” she said. “The walking track is a bigthing, and as far as fitness, it will be more opened up.”

The therapy center will also have new equipment and a new areadevoted to pediatrics, Mills said.

“We’ve been meeting with architects and have plans for bothbuildings, and we’ve visited other therapy centers across the stateto get ideas,” she said. “We want the community to know we’reexcited. This is a very positive move out of a necessity for spaceand a need to be able to expand our services.”