Allan Appel Photo
FHCHC Medical Assistant Ary Vazquez, pictured, said she is late for work several times a month looking for parking.
Affordable housing is critical for low-income people — but so is affordable health care, and easy, walkable, parkable access to it.
Fair Haven Community Health Care (FHCHC) made that argument Tuesday night at a meeting of the Board of Zoning Appeals on behalf of a proposed new parking plan.
No vote was taken at the meeting.
Addressing a dearth of parking spaces for patients and staff, the center plans to expand its lot by knocking down three buildings it owns behind its Grand Avenue facility, at 81, 85, and 87 Woolsey St. Two units in those buildings are currently occupied by renters, whom FHCHC said it will help to find lodgings. The knockdown will allow for an additional 10 parking spaces, bringing the current hodgepodge around the building of 47 spots, in what designer Oliver Gaffney called a “pinball” machine mess, to 57.
In the process, the need for on-street parking will be reduced, as will the need for staff and patients to park at the John Martinez School and other locations in the adjacent neighborhood.
“The ordinance,” said lawyer Meaghan Miles representing FHCHC, “allows a special exception to have a parking area for a critical resource [like FHCHC], well screened, with lighting to improve safety and security, and good storm water management.”
Click here for details of the parking plan in a presentation FHCHC made earlier this month to the the Fair Haven Community Management Team.
Miles announced that the plan has received the formal approval of the management team and the city Traffic and Parking Department.
Given the city’s affordable housing crunch, the nub of the discussion Tuesday evening focused on whether FHCHC had considered saving the three old houses and incorporating them into the parking plan.
“We have such a need in the city. I hate to see housing go away for cars,” said Commissioner Errol Saunders.
“You couldn’t pencil out a parking lot with the three residential houses with the lot being safe and organized,” replied designer Gaffney, of TPA Design.
Of the three houses involved, only two units in one, 87 Woolsey, have actual residents and the FHCHC is working to relocate them, Miles reported. FHCHC President Suzanne Lagarde said 85 Woolsey has not been used for residence for well over a decade. (It is used for office space.) She said 83 Woolsey was bought by the clinic but found to be in such expensive grievous disrepair that razing it – ultimately for needs of the future parking lot – is the prudent choice.
Miles added that the parking lot, when complete, will be open to the community to use in the evenings and when the clinic is closed. “It’s a way of giving back to the community and reducing parking on Woolsey Street,” she said.
Because the plan involves parking -– the provision of ultimately 57 spaces where technically, due to the zoning and lot size, 64 are required -– the matter was referred to the City Plan Commission for advice before the zoners vote on it.
“So see you next month,” concluded the BZA Chair Mildred Melendez.