🔒Health clinics expand as demand for services grows

The ever-increasing local demand for services like mental health care and addiction treatment is fueling expansion at New Haven’s community health clinics, which both announced plans to grow this fall.

Cornell Scott-Hill Health Center, which reported 360,000 patient visits in fiscal 2022, broke ground on a new addiction services center in September, in addition to launching a new foundation to fund future growth.

Fair Haven Community Health Care also saw its patient visits surge last year and began the process of building a new medical campus near its main location in the Fair Haven neighborhood.

“For the first time in the half-century of our existence, we are hoping and we are dreaming to build a state-of-the-art facility,” Fair Haven Community Health Care CEO Dr. Suzanne Lagarde told city planners at a meeting on Oct. 19.

After years of squeezing into an aging structure at 374 Grand Ave., the center’s leaders plan a multiphase project to create a new campus, “which this community desperately needs, and I would argue deserves,” Lagarde said.

At Cornell Scott-Hill Health Center (CS-HHC), growing demand for addiction treatment prompted the development of the new Recovery & Wellness Center, a three-story, 31,000-square-foot facility at 149 Minor St., in New Haven’s Hill neighborhood. The project broke ground on Sept. 22, with plans to open by the end of next year.

When complete, the $24.5 million center will provide 52 dormitory beds for those in treatment for substance-use disorders, along with group counseling rooms, therapy space, a medical suite, an industrial kitchen and cafeteria.

Funding major projects like the Recovery & Wellness Center is the mission of CS-HHC’s new foundation, which was announced in September.

Founded in 1968 as a collaboration between community leaders and the Yale School of Medicine, CS-HHC offers primary care, behavioral health care and addiction services, dental services, pediatrics and early childhood care at 25 sites and schools across the region and employs 700 people.

Both the organization’s revenues and expenses rose significantly between 2020 and 2021, with revenues growing to $80.8 million in 2021 compared to $61.7 million in 2020, according to public tax forms. Expenses rose to $74.2 million in 2021 compared to $60.5 million in 2020.

Foundation Chair LindyLee Gold cited increasing demand as part of the impetus to set up the fundraising body.

Growing pains in Fair Haven

At Fair Haven Community Health Care’s center on Grand Avenue, the growing numbers of staff and patients are making it difficult to accommodate patient needs and to park in the dense residential area that hosts the facility.

Lagarde and Fair Haven leaders asked the New Haven Planning Commission on Oct. 19 to grant a request to rezone some of the property owned by the center to allow for more on-site parking, as a first step in building a new campus. Once all permits and funding are in place, the clinic hopes to break ground next year on the project.

Growing demand for mental health services has helped fuel the center’s growth, according to Lagarde. FHCHC has already expanded some of its off-site services this year, including an afterschool outpatient mental health program for kids in Branford.

According to its most recent tax filings, Fair Haven’s revenue grew to $37.7 million in fiscal 2021 compared to $27.7 million in 2020, while expenses grew to $31.8 million in 2021 from $24.3 million in 2020.

Currently operating at 14 sites in and around New Haven, the healthcare nonprofit is bursting at the seams at its home base, said Meaghan Miles, an attorney for Carmody Torrance Sandak & Hennessey LLP who represented Fair Haven before the commission.

The proposed project would consolidate property at 362, 372 and 374 Grand Ave., and 81, 83, 85 and 87 Woolsey St., to revamp the center’s current building, erect a new building on the corner and add on-site parking.

“Really the goal is to establish a healthcare campus here in the Fair Haven neighborhood and for the community,” Miles said. “Everyone agrees that supporting a critical healthcare resource for the Fair Haven community is extremely important and in the interest of the city.”

“We currently work out of buildings that were built in the mid 1900s, mid 1800s,” Lagarde said. “We really want to move this project forward — our community deserves no less.”