• Planned health clinic excites South Dallas neighborhood

    Published at dallasnews.com: 01 May 2022 11:11 PM
    By SHERRY JACOBSON

    The new South Dallas clinic being built for Parkland Memorial Hospital represents more than an improvement in health care for one of the city’s poorest neighborhoods.

    As a crowd of nearly 200 people assembled Thursday for the clinic’s ceremonial groundbreaking, the excitement level was almost palpable for the cluster of nearby residents.

    “I haven’t seen anything so big in this neighborhood for 50 years,” said Willie Mae Coleman, 79. “It’s a big day for all of us. I’m so excited.”

    Until five years ago, the 7-acre site at Scyene Road and Hatcher Street was home to a “hot-sheet” motel, illegal nightclub and other illicit activities that plagued the community for decades.

    “They killed one of my church members in that nasty old motel,” recalled Coleman, president of the surrounding Bertrand Neighborhood Association. She and others fought to get the businesses closed and finally torn down in 2009.

    Development of the $19.8 million clinic is a public-private partnership involving the city of Dallas and Frazier Revitalization, a community development organization that amassed the land for the project. A long list of local philanthropy groups also provided financial support, including the South Dallas/Fair Park Trust Fund.

    “This could not have happened without significant public and philanthropic support,” said Richard Knight, a former Dallas city manager and Frazier’s chairman.

    Frazier is hoping to develop a second phase of the project, called Hatcher Station Village, attracting a variety of neighborhood amenities. They might include a legal services office, pharmacy, dental clinic or workforce training site.

    Parkland will lease the 44,000-square-foot clinic when it’s completed in early 2015. It will replace the hospital’s outmoded Community Oriented Primary Care facility at 3320 Live Oak St. in East Dallas.

    Currently, the East Dallas clinic serves about 15,000 patients, many of whom live closer to the South Dallas clinic location, said Sharon Phillips, the Parkland executive who oversees Parkland’s 12 community clinics.

    Patients also could benefit from the new location being across Hatcher Street from a DART rail station on the Green Line. The new Parkland hospital, which also opens in 2015, is on the same rail line.

    “This is the first community clinic we’ll have on the DART line,” Phillips said.

    Although the project has not received final approval from Parkland’s board of managers, a lease agreement is expected to be signed in coming weeks. The Dallas City Council also is slated to finalize its involvement in the project later this month.

    “We worked long and hard for this,” City Council member Caroline Davis told the gathered crowd. “It has taken a lot of rolling up your sleeves and getting your feet dirty to make sure this project works.”

    See the original article at: http://www.dallasnews.com/news/community-news/best-southwest/headlines/20140501-planned-health-clinic-excites-south-dallas-neighborhood.ece