December 11, 2009
By Thor Jourgensen/The Daily Item
The Lynn Community Health Center is pushing ahead with major expansion plans even though it did not grab a hoped-for spot on a federal stimulus funding list released this week.
Eighty-five health centers across the country, including six in Massachusetts, split $600 million in construction and renovation money.
"We're doing a building regardless," said LCHC Executive Director Lori Abrams Berry, who said work will begin on an addition to the 269 Union St. center in an adjacent parking lot early next spring.
In preparation for the project, construction workers dug environmental test pits in the parking lot Friday.
Without the stimulus money, Berry said the expansion project will be scaled down from a $17 million, two-story building to a $10 million, one-story structure. Additional space created by construction will allow the center to expand its walk-in clinic.
Berry said adding four primary care physicians to the clinic will allow the center to treat patients who would otherwise seek more expensive emergency room care. The Center will work with fund-raising supporters and seek other funding sources to raise pay for the $7 million second floor.
The expansion will create 100 jobs and boost the presence downtown of a health care facility that occupied a historic house next to Goldfish Pond 19 years ago.
A 2006 LCHC study concluded the facility must expand in order to meet the growing needs of immigrants moving to Lynn and residents who count LCHC doctors as their primary care physicians.
In 2005, LCHC undertook a $1 million renovation to its children's waiting room and adult reception area.
The federal government provided $500,000 for that project and state development officials helped lower financing costs associated with the $490,000 Eastern Bank provided to LCHC.
The renovation was the first major work undertaken in the 269 Union St. facility since 1999 when the center added a walk-in clinic.
The center sees 23,000 patients who make more than 148,000 visits a year, including immigrants from countries where sizable numbers of people have been exposed to tuberculosis.
Operating locally since 1971, the center currently runs 12 facilities including ones on Union Street, Western Avenue and clinics in six schools.
It is a source of preventative care, checkups and medical care for many patients who do not have transportation to Union or Salem hospitals. North Shore Medical Center provides a variety of services to assist the center, including X-ray equipment.
LCHC also operates a dental office on Union Street and doctors' offices in Market Square as well as six school-based health centers.
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