Evergreen Health Services has revived plans to expand its headquarters on S. Elmwood Avenue. A five-story, $10 million addition is planned for a parking lot behind the historic Roanoke Building at 206 S. Elmwood Avenue. The site is kitty-corner from the rapidly rising 250 Delaware Avenue mixed-use project. Rochester’s SWMB Architects (SWBR) designed the proposed addition.
The not-for-profit Evergreen Association oversees four affiliated agencies including the Evergreen Foundation, Evergreen Health Services (formerly AIDS Community Services), PRIDE Center of WNY, and Alianza Latina Community Access Services. Demand for the agencies’ services, and an employee count that has doubled in the past few years, is prompting the expansion plan.
Rendering from Business First
According to Buffalo Business First, Evergreen will be showing its plans to neighbors this evening at 6 PM in Evergreen Commons, formerly the Prospect Avenue Baptist Church, at 67 Prospect Avenue.
Evergeen has assembled an urban campus of sorts in the Historic West Village. The agency has been located in the Roanoke since 2006 (below). Evergreen later purchased and expanded into an 1850′s Victorian residence at 200 S. Elmwood and the Watkins Apartment building at 170 W. Chippewa Street.
Evergeen purchased the Prospect Avenue Baptist Church at the northeast corner of Georgia Street and Prospect Avenue in late 2011. The sanctuary at 262 Georgia Street and adjoining properties at 71 and 73 Prospect Avenue were purchased for $115,000 from the Prospect Avenue Baptist Society.
In 2005, the agency floated plans to relocate to the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus. Funding for that $10 million project fell through and Evergreen drew up plans for a 21,000 square foot addition to the Roanoke in 2007. The previously proposed addition designed by Silvestri Architects (below) was also iced after funding for the project was hard to come by in a down economy.
The Roanoke was completed in 1901 by John S. Rowe and was likely intended to be an apartment house but because of the Pan American Exposition it functioned as a hotel for awhile. It is done in the Venetian Gothic style of architecture as evidenced by the polychrome brickwork andthe elaborately patterned archway (entranceway). The design on top that looks almost native American is a replica from the Doges’ Palace in Venice.