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Despite TB Investigation, COHC to Push for More Parking

By Kerri Provost

February 17, 2012

After screening around 150 individuals from Charter Oak Health Center and a homeless shelter, 28 preliminary tests yielded reactive results for tuberculosis. While the Department of Public Health has issued more subpoenas as it investigates the TB case, Charter Oak Health Center continues to press for an expansion of its parking.

This proposal has been controversial, as members of the Frog Hollow NRZ have requested that the health center conduct traffic studies to determine that a need for additional parking exists. The NRZ expressed concerns that turning these two parcels — 41 and 42 Grand Street — into a lot would adversely affect traffic flow on the surrounding streets:

Letter from Frog Hollow NRZ to David Panagore: 27 June 2011

After using Freeman Companies, LLC to conduct traffic studies, the proposal was again raised at a meeting of the NRZ.

In October 2011, the NRZ voted to approve the proposed development with strings attached: Charter Oak Health Center must work to improve the streetscape of Grand Street between Broad and Oak. It also has required that COHC “commit to the preservation and rehabilitation of the historic structures on Grand Street that it currently controls and that it seeks to control and that it make habitable any building that the City’s Department of Development Services, License and Inspections Division has declared unfit for human occupation. ”

Some on the NRZ have commented that the continuous expansion of COHC is making the neighborhood seem like a medical district, which is not within One City, One Plan nor the Frog Hollow NRZ strategic plan.

The expansion would allow for a surface lot with seventeen spaces.

On February 21, 2012, a public hearing will be held in Council Chambers at 7pm to discuss the proposed sale of 41 and 42 Grand Street by the Hartford Redevelopment Agency to Charter Oak Health Center.