While two teams vie for rights to redevelop the shuttered Millard Fillmore Gates Circle Hospital site, Kaleida Health has found a taker for the old Deaconess Center located at 1001 Humboldt Parkway. Kaleida Health will demolish the 268,000-square-foot facility to make it shovel ready for the Community Action Organization of Erie County Inc. (CAO).
CAO plans to construct new headquarters, additional office space, a community service center, classrooms and housing on the site, while preserving the Gethsemane Manor Apartments, a senior living facility. The CAO also plans to locate a Head Start Academy on this site and is working through a plan to stimulate home improvements in the surrounding areas.
The Deaconess Center is a former hospital that closed in 1986. Most recently, the Deaconess Center served as a nursing home for Kaleida Health but closed in December 2011 to make way for the organization's new long-term care facility, HighPointe on Michigan.
HighPointe on Michigan marks the consolidation of two Kaleida Health nursing homes, the 242-bed DeaconessCenter and the 75-bed skilled-nursing unit located inside Millard Fillmore Gates CircleHospital, both of which are now closed.
The Deaconess property is just north of CAO's St. Martin Village project on Dodge Street (below). The multi-faceted St. Martin Village development consisted of partial demolition, renovation and new construction at the former German Roman Catholic Orphan Home site to create 60 affordable housing units. The complex opened last July.
Demolition of the Deaconess site is expected to begin this summer.
Why not reuse what's already there? What's the rush to tear the whole thing down? It could easily be re-clad like the Donovan Building if the new owners don't like the aesthetics. If the organization wants to provide "action" to the "community," one way to do that is to be more green, which means not sending a four-story building to the landfill without good reason. When reusing a building, labor is a much larger percentage of the cost than materials are, compared to new construction. The labor to reuse buildings comes from the local labor market and has a direct impact. The cost of materials does not go to the local economy.
Everyone knows that community action organizations need swanky new digs.
Do you know anything about the building?
It's quite probably that there's asbestos all over the place, who knows what kind of condition it's in?
Not every *#*#*# old building is worth saving.
I agree--why not reuse the building? It's more green and is a basic design off which you can build.
Why not reuse the building? Because it looks like *#*# and nobody likes it.
I do. In fact, I really like it.
We don't see turquoise buildings any more, and it's a great example of mid-century architecture. It's not a great building, by any means, but it's solid design.
BTW, it's too bad the expressway separates this from the Science Museum. The two organizations could establish collaborations to mutual benefit. But I don't think that would work unless the bridge could become more pedestrian friendly.
Both the Dulski (now Avant) and the Donovan buildings were loaded with asbestos and neither were thought to be attractive. However both buildings were (or will be) reused after removing the asbestos and reskinning the buildings. Jessie's and Polonia's rationales for demolishing the building fail for this reason.
However, I wonder if the CAO could fill the 268,000 sq. feet for its HQ and head start programs. Sounds like a lot more space than they need. Also, the Dulski and Donovan were located in areas where the land is more valuable and supported a high rise. I would be surprised if demand for space and economics at that location justified a Dulski/Donovan-style reuse.
Honestly, if Kaleida Health is willing to fund the demolition than let it proceed.
Because, as all of us in engineering and construction know, if this project does not happen than we have yet another derelict building, open to vandalism and destruction with the short-term-memory-challenged screaming at kaleida to repair THEIR building forgetting that Kaleida had offered to remove it in the first place.
Besides, as already stated here, it is an ugly building….