Fair Haven Health Expands, In Color

by Thomas Breen The New Haven independent

Fair Haven Health’s new HQ, at the corner of Grand and James.

Art and exam rooms, on the second floor.

A collage hangs on the third floor of Fair Haven Community Health Care’s new headquarters on Grand Avenue.

Through black and white photos — of founder Katrina Clark, of a list of the first board members, of a 1971 handwritten message declaring, “Clinic Patients: The Clinic Belongs To You!” — the collage tells the story of the community health center’s first five and a half decades of serving Fair Haven.

Then, by the time the collage rounds the corner, it bursts into color, and points towards the health center’s future in a brand new 35,600 square-foot medical-office building that, after less than two years of construction, is just about complete.

Fair Haven Community Health Care CEO Suzanne Lagarde showed off that collage and so many other artworks and exam rooms and community spaces Monday morning during a walk-through of the new building in advance of its official grand opening on Wednesday.

Construction began on this new building — which includes a total of 26 exam rooms and plenty of other community spaces spread across a basement and three above-ground floors — in October 2023.

Lagarde said she expects the first patients will be seen at the new building by June 23.

In July, Fair Haven Health plans to move over many of its patients and clinicians to the new building so that five months of renovations can take place at the center’s current headquarters, right next door at 374 Grand. Then, by January, both buildings — old and new — should be open and in full use, ushering in a new “campus” of Fair Haven Community Health Care buildings on Grand near James Street.

“Color. Light. Welcoming. Quality care,” Lagarde said as she talked about what the community-informed design of the new building is meant to communicate to the staff, patients, and fellow Fair Haveners and New Haveners as they experience this space.

Fair Haven Community Health Care saw 37,000 unique patients across 160,000 different visits in 2024, Lagarde said. The federally qualified health center currently employs around 330 people, and provides adult care, family medicine, podiatry, behavioral health care. Lagarde said she expects the number of patients and staff alike to grow as this new headquarters comes online.

The building is suffused with light and art — by Dominican muralist Silvia López Chavez, by Fair Haven watercolor painter Val Richardson — and so much color, from brightly hued floor tiles to “potato chip” shaped sculptures hanging in the first-floor waiting area.

“I think it’s gorgeous,” Lagarde said with pride about the building. “That was intentional.” This center’s patients — and the Fair Haven neighborhood — deserve a building as beautiful as this one.

But of all the rooms, of all the art, perhaps the part of the building Lagarde looks most affectionately upon is that third-floor collage, which hangs just down the hall from a “food farmacy,” a conference room, a kitchen, a diabetes prevention program, a terrace, a new-employee training room, and other spaces designed for community use.

With the help of a trove of primary source documents, the collage tells the story of Fair Haven Community Health Care dating back to its founding in 1971.

It includes photos of the center’s founder and longtime director, Katrina Clark. It includes a list of the first board of directors (Nina Adams, Rebecca Bell, Carol Berries, Avilino Perez, etc.)

It shows doctors taking the pulse of patients and opening school-based clinics and teaching pregnant mothers what to expect.

It shows community members and elected officials (Martin Looney, John DeStefano, among others) gathering to celebrate milestone after milestone.

It shows a playbill for a Long Wharf Theatre production of a play called, “July 7, 1994,” inspired by Fair Haven Health and written by Pulitzer Prize winner Donald Margulies.

It includes a tribute to the late Fair Haven Health Dr. Christopher Phillips, who died of Covid, followed by photo after photo of the health center’s response to the pandemic.

And it shows, in color, the “topping off” ceremony of the new building, and the center’s continued growth with the help of this new-construction project.

“This is one of my favorite pictures,” Lagarde said, pausing before one of the earliest documents — a photo of a handwritten sign announcing Fair Haven Health’s community orientation.

That sign begins with the message: “Clinics Patients, The Clinic Belongs To You!” and goes on to state, “We are a clinic by and for the people of Fair Haven.”