Medical Facility Opens on Burnside Avenue

Verona Greenland (in red), MHHC's president and CEO, cuts to ribbon on the new building (Photo courtesy of MHHC)

Editor's note: This article appeared in the latest issue of the Mount Hope Monitor.

By JAMES FERGUSSON 

On Dec. 1, Morris Heights Health Center held a grand opening ceremony for its new 31,000-square-foot medical facility on West Burnside Avenue. The building, called Harrison Circle, will offer primary care services, behavioral health services, cardiology, mammography, digital x-ray, podiatry, and other types of care.

“We knew we had to expand our services in order to accommodate the increasing need for health care services within our community,” said Verona Greenland, Morris Heights’ president and CEO.
Harrison Circle is also home to 70 affordable apartments for seniors.

Attendees included Dr. Steven M. Safyer, the president and CEO of Montefiore Medical Center, and Adolfo Carrion, the former Bronx borough president who currently works for the Department of Housing Preservation and Urban Development (HUD), which helped fund the project. Also present was Fritz Jean, Mount Hope Housing Company’s president and CEO. Mount Hope partnered with Morris Heights on the senior housing.

The facility is on West Burnside Avenue and Harrison Avenue (Photo: J. Fergusson)

New Health Center and Housing for Seniors to be Built on Burnside

Community leaders converged on a Morris Heights sidewalk, this afternoon, to celebrate the beginnings of an exciting new project that will see a six-story building - home to a health center and 70 units of affordable housing for seniors - rise on what has long been an abandoned lot.

Morris Heights Health Center (MHHC) and Mount Hope Housing Company are behind the venture, which is being built at the northeast corner of West Burnside and Harrison Avenues. Today marked the start of a demolition job that will flatten the existing tumble-down buildings on the site. Construction will begin in October and, assuming all goes to plan, finish in December 2009. Most of the money has been raised, but according to Verona Greenland (pictured speaking), president and CEO of MHHC, the costs have skyrocketed and they're still hunting for $9 million. In October, they're holding a fundraiser.

They'll be more about the "Harrison Circle" project (Harrison, because it's on Harrison, and Circle, because, well, it'll be shaped like a circle) in the next print and on-line editions of the Mount Hope Monitor. (Photo by James Fergusson)