Kokua Kalihi Valley plans to transform the P&P Supermarket building on School Street into a sleek medical services center, which will offer health and vocational programs.

The $6.5 million renovation of the 17,000-square-foot, two-story building is to begin in October and wrap up in July 2010. The renovated building, coupled with the nonprofit's existing facility on School Street, will double Kokua Kalihi Valley's clinical services space. The new facility will also include a computer- and job-training classroom, a multipurpose room and a commercial kitchen.

The kitchen and other facilities will be used for a micro-enterprise program, meant to help low-income residents start their own businesses. In addition, Kokua Kalihi Valley estimates that the new building itself will create dozens of jobs along with opportunities for health care workers in training.

Half of the funding for the new facility came from a federal grant that was announced this month. U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke said in a news release that the grant will "help create a health and jobs training center that will strengthen the region's bioscience sector."

The state and others have also pitched in funds for the renovation.

Kokua Kalihi Valley offers medical and dental services to low-income and uninsured residents. About 85 percent of those who go to the nonprofit's current health center at 2239 School St. are at or below the federal poverty line. And the number of uninsured patients is on the rise.

Dr. David Derauf, executive director of Kokua Kalihi Valley, said the health center is seeing more and more people who have lost their health insurance after being laid off. "We are feeling it," Derauf said, adding that the renovated facility will help the nonprofit serve more patients.

"We're really bursting at the seams," he said.