Photo by Deb Gau Kate and Andrew Frerich cut the ribbon for the new Marshall Dental Excellence office on Nwakama Street this week. Andrew Frerich's dental practice officially moved into the new office earlier this month.

MARSHALL — Planning and building a new dental office was no small task. But it was an exciting one, Dr. Andrew Frerich said.

“It gives us more room, more opportunity to grow,” Frerich said. This month, Frerich’s practice, Marshall Dental Excellence, moved to a new facility on Nwakama Street in Marshall.

While there was no way to know exactly what the future would have in store for his dental practice, Frerich said it was exciting to have room to meet future care needs in the Marshall area.

“We hope for continued growth, just to be able to provide more opportunities for the people of this community, because there’s a need for that,” he said.

A ribbon-cutting for the new Marshall Dental Excellence location was held Wednesday evening during the Marshall Area Chamber of Commerce’s “Business After Hours” event.

“It’s a really exciting new chapter for our lives,” said Kate Frerich, Andrew’s wife and the office manager at Marshall Dental Excellence.

Both Andrew and Kate Frerich grew up in Marshall. After Andrew started his dentistry career, he came back to his hometown and practiced with his father, Dr. John Frerich, for a few years before he and Kate bought the practice in 2020.

It wasn’t long after that the Frerichs started looking at the idea of a new office.

“In 2021, we decided to buy this land. So that’s when the dreaming really started,” Kate Frerich said. “It was like, someday we want this to be our place.”

The Frerichs worked with architects at Engan Associates to design a new facility.

“We spent a lot of time really designing the building to be the very best we possibly could, particularly for employees, but then to design the things that we could do to make the dental experience as good as possible for patients,” Kate Frerich said. Some of the considerations were geared toward making going to the dentist’s office feel more comfortable. In one example, the Frerichs said they wanted to have the air compressors that run dental equipment be farther away from patients. It would help make the experience of being in the dentist’s chair less noisy.

“We tried to do everything we could to make it more comfortable for patients,” Kate Frerich said.

The opening of the new office was the culmination of a lot of work, Andrew Frerich said.

“You work 40 hours a week doing dentistry, and then you do running a business, and on top of that is dreaming and designing and making this become a reality. That’s a big commitment,” he said. Frerich said he and Kate were thankful for family and friends for their patience during the whole process of designing and building the new facility.

The Frerichs said Sussner Construction did a great job of making the building go smoothly. When it came time to actually move in, Andrew and Kate also put in a lot of work.

Moving in and installing the equipment for the new dental office was a big job on its own, they said.

“It took four or five days, on two different install chunks, to get all of the dental equipment installed,” Kate Frerich said. “It was kind of all hands on deck to get it all moved over.”

Andrew Frerich said being able to continue provide dental care in southwest Minnesota was important.

“We’re seeing more and more of the smaller communities losing those opportunities, losing dentists,” he said. Minnesota is starting to see a deficit in providers, he said.

“So there’s a need, and we need to be able to continue to provide for patients,” Frerich said. “We’re really committed to this community. It’s important to us to really root down, because it’s where I was raised. We want to be a part of this community and support it.”