Workers, supporters celebrate LCHC addition

April 13, 2012
By Thor Jourgensen/The Daily Item

Lynn Community Health Center is adding 400 new patients a month to the 36,000 it serves annually, said Director Lori Abrams Berry Thursday as she helped celebrate the Union Street facility’s new addition.

Even though workers finished building and outfitting the addition at the end of February, Berry said Thursday’s celebration of the project’s finish marked the opportunity to assemble legislative and city officials and other people she said played roles in raising money for the Center.

“It’s a thrill to have it finally open,” she said.

The addition features two floors and a basement full of offices, examination rooms and laboratories and third-floor space for future expansion.

“We’ve experienced incredible growth since 2006,” she said.

The ribbon cutting opening the dental floor at the Lynn Community Health Center drew a crowd of dignitaries Thursday. From left, state Rep. Steve Walsh, Dr. Catherine Latham, Superintendent of Lynn Schools, James Cowdell, Executive Director of EDIC of Lynn, Clare Hayes, widow of Stephen Hayes, Lori Berry, Executive Director of the LCHC, Pamela Lawrence, Senior Vice President, Strategy, Administration, Marketing & Community Relations at North Shore Medical Center, state Rep. Robert Fennell and U.S.
The ribbon cutting opening the dental floor at the Lynn Community Health Center drew a crowd of dignitaries Thursday. From left, state Rep. Steve Walsh, Dr. Catherine Latham, Superintendent of Lynn Schools, James Cowdell, Executive Director of EDIC of Lynn, Clare Hayes, widow of Stephen Hayes, Lori Berry, Executive Director of the LCHC, Pamela Lawrence, Senior Vice President, Strategy, Administration, Marketing & Community Relations at North Shore Medical Center, state Rep. Robert Fennell and U.S. Rep. John Tierney. (Item Photo / Owen O'Rourke)

Berry credited hard work by the center’s board of directors and city officials with assembling federal money, bank loans and donations still being raised to pay for the $18.8 million addition. The addition sits on a former parking lot and movie theater site. A foyer links it to the center’s original building at 269 Union St.

“In 1971, my brother, Richie, and I saw ‘Planet of the Apes’ here,” recalled the city’s Economic Development and Industrial Corporation Executive Director James Cowdell on Thursday.

He told more than 80 people attending Thursday’s celebration that former City Councilor Deborah Smith Walsh and Berry pushed to get the addition built.

The center applied and received more than $8 million in federal Affordable Care Act and economic stimulus money to help pay to build and equip the new building.

Berry said center officials and board members applied for the money in 2009 and 2010.

U.S. Rep. John Tierney (D-Salem) and Massachusetts League of Community Health Centers President James Hunt said center board members overcame tough competition to get the federal money.

“It took creativity, drive, perseverance and political know-how,” Tierney said.

Berry on Thursday said center directors are working to raise $6 million in donations to supplement the federal money as well as tax credits and bank financing that helped pay for the addition.

The addition features a basement community room and enrollment office, a first-floor urgent care center and central registration as well as mammography and radiology facilities.

The second-floor offers primary care and dental care and a third floor remains empty until the Center needs to play and additional expansion. The addition was constructed in 2011.

The Center also runs clinics in Market Square and on Western Avenue and occupies Central Avenue office space. It also runs six school-based clinics, Berry said.

“This goes beyond medical care to making people healthy their entire lives,” Board of Directors President John Feehan said Thursday.

Thor Jourgensen can be reached at tjourgensen@itemlive.com.



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