Hamilton Health Center will expand its current campus, above, by adding a parking lot and 25,000-square foot building by next fall.
A planned expansion at Hamilton Health Center in Allison Hill will increase pre-K access for children in that neighborhood, while also providing additional parking for the facility’s patients and employees.
On Tuesday, Harrisburg City Council approved Hamilton Health’s application to add a new parking lot and a 25,000-squre-foot building to its facility on S. 17th Street. The building will house classrooms for Capital Area Head Start and another child care facility.
Jo Pepper, executive director of Capital Area Head Start, said that the Hamilton Health expansion will allow her organization to direct more resources to its highest-need area. They will increase Head Start enrollment in Allison Hill by 80 slots starting next year.
“Every year, one of our biggest problems is finding safe, age-appropriate facility space in our areas of need,” Pepper said. “We’ve been looking for additional space in Allison Hill for three to five years now.”
Capital Area Head Start will occupy five classrooms in the new Hamilton Health building, where 80 children will attend pre-K for six hours a day, five days a week.
Pepper said that the 17104 zip code, which encompasses Allison Hill, currently has a list of 224 children waiting for a spot in pre-K – the highest of any area served by Capital Area Head Start. Within that zip code, 391 children are currently enrolled in Head Start pre-K programs operating in public schools.
Capital Area Head Start obtained federal funding earlier this year to increase facility space and classroom hours across their programs, which serve Dauphin, Perry and Cumberland counties. They subsequently moved some enrollment slots from their low-need areas to high-need ones like Allison Hill.
Pepper said that the Hamilton Health project, which administrators hope to complete by fall 2018, was a major factor in deciding where to distribute future enrollment.
“It’s our highest-need area, and now we have great facility space,” Pepper said. “It can be difficult to apply for more funding if I don’t have appropriate facility space.”
Federal funding will also allow Capital Area Head Start to pay rent for the Hamilton Health space, which Pepper said meets fair market value. Their rental space will also house early Head Start programs and offices for home visit counselors.
Jeanine Peterson, CEO of Hamilton Health, said that her staff decided to pursue a building permit when Capital Area Head Start approached them in 2015 about renting space on their campus. At that time, the Hamilton Health facility was at full capacity, but Peterson believed a partnership would help parents access Hamilton Health’s services for children.
A third of Hamilton Health patients are children receiving health and dental care and school immunizations, said Peterson. Hamilton Health also houses a federally-sponsored Women Infants and Children (WIC) program that offers nutritional supplements for pregnant women and young children.
“We are a one-stop shop for families to access what they need,” Peterson said. “Co-locating with Head Start eliminates a lot of the barriers that a lot of families have in ensuring that their kids get quality health care.”
Pepper agrees that the new space will benefit programming at Head Start and Hamilton Health.
“I can’t wait to break ground,” she said. “We’re very excited about the opportunities and the initiatives that we’ll be able to develop by providing educational services on the campus of an important community health care provider.”
Peterson also said that the 30,000 patients who get treatment at Hamilton Health make the neighborhood a ripe spot for other business opportunities. She wishes that more investors would look past downtown development areas when choosing the sites for future projects.
“I think that a lot of attention is paid to the downtown and midtown areas, and we forget that there’s tremendous opportunity in the city in areas like Allison Hill,” Peterson said. “Getting other businesses to take a look at this corridor would be a major asset to entire city.”
