Plans for new Harvard Street health facility moving ahead

A groundbreaking for the new Harvard Street Neighborhood Health Center could come as early as late September, according to CEO Charley Murphy.

The project has been in the planning and funding stages since 2022, and “we are still moving forward,” he said. “The plan that we’re hoping for is to close in a month and get all the paperwork done. If we pull that off we could have a groundbreaking at the end of September and go through an 18-month construction process to get it up and running.”

The health center now faces Blue Hill Avenue, and is stretched for space. The new one will front Old Road and Ellington Street, with an address of 8 Old Rd. It will feature a new building that will be more visible and contain family medicine, dental, specialties like OB-GYN, eye clinics, and podiatry, labs, and a pharmacy.

Once the building is completed, current operations at 632 Blue Hill Ave. will be moved into the new building, making way for Phase 2 of the plan, which includes demolishing the current health center and the old theatre building next door for approximately 100 units of affordable housing.