WAUPUN — A bigger and better eye clinic is being constructed in Waupun and will be ready for business before the new year said Dr. Thomas Castillo co-owner of the Waupun Eye Clinic and the Beaver Dam Eye Clinic.
Castillo said when he and co-owner Dr. Jay Wilkins were notified that their lease wouldn’t be renewed at their present location at 10 Beaver Dam St., they were unsure about what to do.
“When the same thing happened to our lease in Horicon, we closed the office. But we’ve been at our present location 16 years. After a lot of soul searching we decided to build a new clinic, bigger, with more state of the art equipment and eyewear selections,” Castillo said.
Wilkins agreed. “We’ll be keeping our staff, and doubling the space. Our goal is to keep the same high quality care in Waupun, as in our Beaver Dam office.”
Castillo said, “We won’t have everything there, We’ll be maintaining our lasers at our Beaver Dam location, but we’ll be adding new state of the art equipment and making the contact lens line larger.”
“Some of the additions and improvements to the medical services we’ll provide,” said Wilkins, “are cataract evaluation, and the diagnosis and treatment of glaucoma, macular degeneration, diabetic eye disease and corneal and external diseases. And we’ll be doing special testing of visual fields.”
“We’re also getting a new corneal topography unit which maps the front surface of the cornea for a number of diseases,” said Castillo.
As far as building the new clinic, Castillo said he is proud that they were able to hire many local contractors from Waupun, Beaver Dam and Randolph to do the lion’s share of the work.
“Roger Schregarus from Waupun is the local architect, and Bill Ganz from Waupun is the electrician. Badger Hill Construction from Randolph is involved, as are some Beaver Dam people.
“The building is going up on schedule, and the workers have great morale. I have two men drop by the construction site every evening to clean up the area. So when the work crews come in the next day they walk into a nice clean work area, and aren’t tripping over this, tripping over that. The morale is great. It’s a nice work environment,” said Castillo.
Castillo said the present staff at the Waupun clinic, Dr. Todd Schneider, who has been practicing in Waupun 36 years, as well as Brenda Redman and Marg Schneider, are all excited about the move.
While the home clinic will remain in Beaver Dam, Castillo and Wilkins said they, as well as Dr. Charles Hendrix, will continue seeing patients at the new clinic on a regular basis.