$3M From Feds Boost Health Clinic Expansion

A Fair Haven-anchoring community health center has landed $3 million in federal funds to help cover the costs of constructing a new neighborhood clinic — as that same center gears up to tear down nearby apartments and relocate tenants in service of a broader campus expansion estimated to cost up to $40 million.

Representatives of Fair Haven Community Health Care, a Grand Avenue-based nonprofit offering sliding scale health services, gathered in the upstairs offices of their health center Tuesday morning with U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro to celebrate a tentative federal grant that could mean more clinic rooms and more clinicians on site soon. They also provided updates on their plans to redevelop a host of adjacent properties in order to build not only a brand new clinic but also to provide parking and community space for an anticipated influx of clients.

DeLauro announced during the presser that she is supporting $3 million in Community Project Funding — a program which allows members of Congress to help direct money towards specific state or local projects — to partially pay for the development of a new clinic building by Fair Haven Community Health Care.

That federal money would go in particular towards construction costs associated with building a new, 33,500 square foot health center featuring additional exam rooms, lab space, and a food pharmacy. Read about that plan in more detail here.

“This facility has been a leader in healthcare in Connecticut,” DeLauro said. ​“What’s its focus? Excellent, affordable, primary care for all patients, regardless of their insurance plan, their zip code or their ability to pay.”

Fair Haven Health CEO Suzanne Lagarde said that the money is guaranteed so long as the nonprofit gets their application in by a June 1 deadline.

“While this space has served us well for many decades, the truth is it’s no longer able to offer 21st century care to New Haven residents,” she said.

Fair Haven Health first started offering services to patients in 1971 out of Columbus School two nights a week with the help of a $5,000 grant from the Community Foundation for Greater New Haven. Since then, the group has bought up a slate of properties along Grand Avenue and Woolsey Street. Last year, the clinic served over 32,000 unique patients, 90 percent of whom have incomes under 200 percent of the federal poverty level.

“Our clinical rooms are tiny and not ideal in a post-Covid world,” Lagarde said. The center’s set-up, with 28 exam rooms on the first floor and a behavioral health room on the second floor, ​“precludes opportunity for any truly integrated behavioral and medical care.”

Lagarde said building that a new clinic is expected to cost around $25 million.

The overall expansion plan stretches beyond that new construction. The organization intends to demolish three homes on Woolsey Avenue, only one of which actually serves as housing for tenants, as well as five apartments, a pizzeria and a pharmacy next door on Grand Avenue. The nonprofit will then expand its surface parking, establish community green space, and renovate its extant clinic to create fewer but larger exam rooms.

In total, Lagarde said, the whole project is anticipated to cost closer to $40 million.

She said her crew is launching a philanthropic campaign to complete financing on the project, but have so far received $3 million in state bonds and $20 million in federal American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funding in addition to the $3 million expected from Community Project Funding. 

Lagarde said the first phase of the project — demolishing existing properties in preparation for construction — can start as soon as June, once all of the tenants are relocated.

A total of seven tenants will have to relocate due to the clinic’s expansion. Two have already found new housing. Lagarde said the center is working with each tenant to identify alternative housing and is covering the cost of moving between homes as well as any gaps between residents’ existing rents and upcoming rents for the next 42 months. Those costs are included in the $40 million figure.

“We don’t like the fact that people are displaced but we’re doing our best to mitigate the effect,” she said.

Once that process is complete, Lagarde said ​“we should have shovels in the ground” by August to begin building the second health clinic.

Fair Haven Alder Sarah Miller also spoke up in favor of the clinic’s expansion Tuesday.

“It is really heartbreaking how much people in our community struggle with things that should be part of a social safety net,” she said. ​“There isn’t always something I can do about housing or education. But because of this institution there’s always something I can do about healthcare.”

She remembered a few weeks ago when two parents consulted her about an outstanding, $800 dental bill for their child they were unsure how to pay.

“I sent them here. And they got their needs met.”