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)

Bronx News Roundup, Feb. 8

A lot happened in the Bronx this weekend while the New Orleans Saints were busy scoring the Super Bowl title. Here's a rundown on some of the biggest news stories:

A fire erupted early Sunday morning in the second floor kitchen of a Morris Heights building. Firefighters rescued five people, including three children, from the building at 45 West Tremont Ave.

A 15-year-old girl was shot outside of an apartment building in Mount Hope Monday night, according to Eyewitness News, and is now in serious but stable condition at St. Barnabas hospital. The gunman fled the scene, and the investigation is ongoing.

Ex-state Sen. Efrain Gonzalez Jr. says it was bad legal advice that made him plead guilty to 2006 corruption charges, and now wants to withdraw his plea.

Dozens of wild chickens have made themselves at home on a street in Highbridge.

Bargain hunters can hit up Middletown for some good shopping deals this week, according to The Daily News. They’ve also rounded up the best places in the borough for a romantic Valentine’s Day.

 

Speaking of Valentine’s Day, the News also reports a boom in the number of weddings at the Bronx Supreme Court’s chapel. 

A Bronx family is suing St. Luke’s Hospital in Manhattan after a fairly routine teeth extraction left a 33-year-old woman dead.

A decades long family feud over a father’s Bronx estate may finally be coming to an end.  Two sisters were granted three family properties in a Bronx court last week after 27 years of legal battle.

6 train straphangers who board at the Morrison Avenue-Soundview and Whitlock Avenue stations should brace themselves for an inconvenient commute. Both stations will be closed over the next few months for renovations by the MTA. In the meantime, riders can get free transfers on the BX4 bus.

A nonprofit group filed a lawsuit last week against two Bronx communities and a Bronx realtor on the grounds of racial discrimination, the New York Times reported Friday. The group accused Bronx communities Edgewater Park and Silver Beach Gardens of preventing black residents from buying homes there, according to the article.

Morris Heights Health Center secured funding to finish the construction of its new health center, dubbed Harrison Circle. MHHC hopes to have the project finished in April.

Residents who live in the 49^th Precinct have reported a spike in the number of car break-ins, according to the Post. 

A BID for Burnside Avenue

Davidson Community Center, working with Mount Hope Housing Company and others, is hoping to establish a Business Improvement District, or BID, on Burnside Avenue.

On April 2, Bronx elected officials, community organizations, and local residents, will gather for a "Taste of the BID" event to announce the beginnings of a campaign to bring on board 116 area business owners. The Atlantic Development Group will hold a steam blasting/graffiti removal/sidewalk washing exhibition - a demonstration of what local merchants could expect with a fully functioning BID. The event begins at 10 a.m. in front of Foot Locker (on Burnside between Jerome and Walton).

According to a provisional press release, the BID will revitalize the shopping district. "As with other commercial strips in the Bronx, the Target Area has too many 99 cent/discount stores, no major national chain, (only fast food national chains)," the release said. "Residents of the Target Area complain of the lack of variety in goods and services which prompts them to shop in other locations in the Bronx or other boroughs in the city." More about BIDs here and here. There are currently six BIDs in the Bronx. In the west Bronx there's Fordham Road and Jerome-Gun Hill.

Photo taken from the Burnside Avenue subway station at Jerome Avenue, looking west.

The BID aside, change is already coming to Burnside Avenue. Morris Heights Health Center is building a new center on an abandoned lot on the corner of Harrison Avenue. St. Barnabas Hospital is in the process of demolishing the former Elks Lodge at Burnside and the Grand Concourse, and building a 10-story outpatient facility. East of the Concourse, near Valentine Avenue, the Atlantic Development Group is building affordable housing. (Atlantic were/are in the running to develop the Kingsbridge Armory but have possibly/probably lost out to another developer.)

UPDATE: The event is being held April 2, NOT March 26 (as was published earlier today. Apologies for the confusion)

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)