Thomas Breen photos
Going up: The new Fair Haven Health clinic at Grand & James ...
... and the new Mequity self-storage site at 129 Amity.
Community healthcare and self-storage centers are on the rise on opposite sides of town.
Need to find them? Just follow the signs.
The City Plan Commission unanimously approved special permits for those two new “monument signs” during its latest monthly online meeting last Wednesday.
They approved one for the new Mequity self-storage development currently being built at 129 Amity Rd., and another for the new Fair Haven Community Health Care campus under construction at 374 Grand Ave.
Both building projects have already received site plan approvals from the local land-use commission: the self-storage development in August 2021 and Fair Haven Health in January 2023. Wednesday’s votes, instead, pointed the way towards both projects’ nearing completion.
The votes were focused on requested “monument signs” — which the city’s zoning code defines as a “freestanding sign on a permanent decorative or architectural base” that is no more than five feet tall.
Carly Galterio of the firm Signarama presented the self-storage development’s sign application. She said that the sign will be internally illuminated, and will fit in with other similar signs on this block, which also includes the shopping plaza with Stop & Shop.
“It’s appropriate with all the other signage on that road,” City Plan Commissioner Joshua Van Hoesen agreed, as he voted with his colleagues in support of the relevant special permit.
The development itself, per the commission’s August 2021 approval of the project, will see the construction of a 64,033 square-foot, four-story self-storage facility with an office, 481 storage units, nine parking spaces and one handicap-accessible parking space.
Local lawyer Meaghan Miles presented Fair Haven Health’s signage application.
She noted that the Grand Avenue sign that the neighborhood-anchoring community health center plans to install will be 8.5 feet tall, thanks to a variance the center received from the Board of Zoning Appeals earlier this month.
Miles said the new 7.5‑foot-tall sign will stand on a one-foot stone base. It will be one of seven signs spread across the campus as a hole, which will include Fair Haven Health’s current and long-standing headquarters, a new building, and a parking lot fronting Woolsey Street.
Per the commission’s January 2023 approval of the project, Fair Haven Health’s second clinic building will include on the first and second floors 13 exam rooms each in addition to dedicated behavioral health and counseling space and conference rooms. The third floor will include an outdoor patio, classrooms and multipurpose rooms to support expanded services like job training programs, digital literacy classes, and English as a second language instruction, and a food pharmacy.
The proposed new signs for Fair Haven Health and (below) Mequity self-storage.
