The Council is asked to decide whether this vacant apartment buidling at 533 Tenth Street, designated “historic”  by the city in 2009, can be demolished to make way for a new Community Health Facility that will create 12 new jobs.

Niagara Falls faces severe public health challenges – from high rates of cardiovascular disease and death to an inordinate number of premature births.

Two years ago, Niagara Falls Memorial Medical Center took a step to address these critical health issues. We entered into a collaborative arrangement with the Community Health Center of Buffalo to operate a federally qualified health center in the Hamilton B. Mizer building, a converted elementary school on the corner of 10th Street and Ferry Avenue. A federally qualified health center could access federal funding we could not -- funding to support additional health services to community members including the elderly, uninsured and underinsured.

In 2010, we purchased the 10th Street land parcel situate between the Mizer building and the ER1 Emergency Department/Heart Center of Niagara hoping someday it would be part of the 10th Street medical corridor.

Sometime later, the Community Health Center of Buffalo filed an application for a federal grant to build a new health center in Niagara Falls, a competitive process that required applicants to identify a specific site for construction. We offered to donate the land we purchased, if the Community Health Center of Buffalo could secure the funds to build on it.

Last month, Sen. Charles Schumer announced that Niagara Falls had, in effect, won the lottery. The center’s $5 million grant was approved. For the project to move forward, however, Niagara Falls Memorial must cede control of the land by July 1.
This opportunity for the infusion of $5 million into the Niagara Falls economy is both site specific and time limited. The new, two-story, 23,200-square-foot facility must open by October 2013. This timetable requires the project move ahead expeditiously.

The new community health center will bring 12 new, permanent full-time jobs to Niagara Falls and assure the retention of 14 full-time health center jobs. It will also create 27 well-paying construction jobs.

There are situations in healthcare – when a person is suffering a heart attack or stroke, for example – when every minute counts. For this reason alone, the proposed health center must be connected to our Emergency Department by covered walkway linking the two structures together.

Currently, Community Health Center patients experiencing a medical emergency wait for an ambulance to drive them from the Mizer Building to the Emergency Department – in other words, from one end of the block to the other. This wastes precious time and money. The covered walkway will provide direct, potentially lifesaving access.

In addition, it will reduce unnecessary Emergency Department use by allowing us to direct patients with non-emergency issues to the community health center where they can be treated more efficiently and less expensively, thus saving the health care system substantial amounts of money.

A vacant house and vacant apartment building occupy the land needed tor the new health center and the necessary covered walkway. Prior to our purchasing it, the apartment building was granted historic landmark status, a status that obstructs the Community Health Center of Buffalo’s ability to build the proposed new facility.

Some have asked why we didn’t request removal of the landmark status as soon as we purchased the property. We didn’t think it was appropriate to make that request when all we had was a dollar and a dream. As soon as the project was funded, we notified the city. Three days after the city notifyied us of the process for requesting a reversal of the building’s historic status, we submitted our request. While we don’t agree with the Historic Preservation Commission’s recommendation to deny our request, we are grateful to them for expediting it.

It would be a tragedy if our city lost $5 million that could greatly improve the health of thousands of our residents who need it most. For them and for the new jobs this project brings, we respectfully have asked the City Council to remove 533 Tenth Street from the landmark registry and facilitate the development of this essential community health project.