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Health center plan gains backing
By Lisa Kocian, Globe Staff | September 1, 2005

A proposal for a $10 million community health center in Framingham is gaining more support now that center officials have addressed neighborhood concerns about parking. But the building's impact on traffic is still being scrutinized.

For the past year, some residents have been fighting the Framingham Community Health Center's proposal, citing concerns about parking, traffic, and the center's clientele. Some worried that the clinic, which provides subsidized healthcare for low-income people, would draw more illegal immigrants to the area.

Progress was made at a recent Planning Board meeting when center officials, who hope to break ground in the fall, presented a new parking plan.

But the Planning Board still has to approve the project, and at least one member says there is more work to do.

''There's still the traffic issue at one of the busiest, most difficult intersections in Framingham," said Planning Board member Sue Bernstein. ''I think we will see a good deal of additional . . . clients from surrounding towns coming to Framingham rather than going all the way to Worcester."

The 24,000-square-foot center is proposed for the corner of Route 135 and South Street, about a block from the perpetually congested intersection of routes 135 and 126 in the downtown area. It would replace a 2,300-square-foot center now on Route 126.

Bernstein said the board expects a report soon from its traffic consultant, but she said it is unlikely that members would be ready to vote the next time the project is on the agenda in October. She said the center had come a long way in addressing the parking concerns.

Rather than supplying parking spots in a lot off site, the center has proposed building an underground garage. More parking would be available at ground level, for a total of 105 spots. Above that, there would be two floors of medical offices.

Zoila Feldman is president and CEO of the Worcester-based Great Brook Valley Health Center Inc., the parent organization of the clinic.

She said the parking plan ''makes it much more expensive for us," but ''the cost of the building keeps going up the longer we wait. To be able to break ground in the fall will make a huge difference to us."

Feldman said traffic should be better at the new facility than it was when an auto body shop operated on the same property.

Demand on the current facility keeps increasing, she said. In the first six months of this year, the clinic saw more patients than in all of last year, said Feldman. Most of the people served are the working poor, she said, who are uninsured but are not quite poor enough for Medicaid, the federal-state program that provides healthcare to low-income people.

Funding for the clinic comes from federal grants and private donors, and patients are asked to pay for services on a sliding scale based on their ability.

''It really is for people caught right in the middle," she said.

The proposal comes at a time when some are complaining that the town has become a magnet both for illegal immigrants and social service programs.

Feldman, in a recent interview, preferred to focus on the warm reception the new parking garage plans received.

''All of the Planning Board members were delighted with the new design," she said. ''If any comments were made in the past [regarding immigrants using the center], they have not been made now."

One Town Meeting member who represents the area and is also a member of a group that opposes illegal immigration said he is now happy with the proposal.

''I very much welcome the clinic," said William LaBarge, after the parking changes were announced. ''I can definitely support this now."

He said he sees the illegal immigration issue as separate -- still a problem but not something that should prevent the clinic from expanding.

''My precinct and a few precincts that abut my precinct are made up of mostly working-class and poor people," said LaBarge. ''And I know my constituency does want the clinic around."

The outlook is bright now for the clinic, he said.

''I don't see any other sticking points, other than some other people are making issues of the traffic -- little, minor details, but nothing I would call a showstopper as far as getting the approval for the clinic going," he said.