The city wants to build a health center next to Friends Hospital. Critics say it’s not accessible.

The Philadelphia Department of Public Health is planning two new public health centers in Northeast Philadelphia, where its existing ability to provide care is more strained than anywhere else in the city.

The proposal includes a smaller location, near the Frankford Transportation Center, that will serve about 5,000 people a year. A much larger site, meant for 30,000 patients a year, is proposed for a site on Roosevelt Boulevard in front of the historic Friends Hospital.

However, concerns over transit accessibility and historical preservation have arisen among community members and stakeholders. A meeting on Friday will determine its fate.

The health department has long desired to bring more health services to Northeast Philadelphia, which, in recent years, has seen an influx of residents from refugee and immigrant communities, many of whom have limited access to federal or private health insurance programs.

The city health department’s capacity in the Northeast is “not big enough,” said Cheryl Bettigole, Philadelphia’s health commissioner. “We are not taking care of enough people, and this section of the city by far suffers the effects of that.”

Critics say that building a huge health center at the entrance to the verdant 100-acre Friends Hospital campus is not ideal. It would both be disruptive to the largely undeveloped historic site and would prove dangerous to those not arriving by car. The proposed site is in a section of the city where poverty is on the rise, and many foreign-born residents do not own cars or have driver’s licenses during their early years in the United States.

Former Councilmember Maria Quiñones Sánchez, who advocated for the site near Frankford Transportation Center, argues that bus access from Roosevelt Boulevard will be difficult for the Friends Hospital site, given that anyone taking public transit will have to cross one of the city’s most deadly roads by foot.

“The Frankford Transportation Center is an ideal location for a multifaceted mixed development project that anchors a community and provides real public transportation access,” said Quiñones Sánchez, who resigned from Council to run for mayor earlier this year. “The Friends Hospital site provides no opportunity for access and puts patients in harm’s way.”

The health department declined to respond to The Inquirer’s questions about transit accessibility

Originally established in 1813 as the Friends Asylum for the Relief of Persons Deprived of the Use of Their Reason, and expanded frequently throughout the 19th century, Friends Hospital was the first hospital dedicated to mental health care in the United States.

Part of the attraction of the area in the 19th century was its isolation, an idyllic escape from the city for those struggling with mental health issues.

Since then, Northeast Philadelphia has become heavily urbanized, and now the area around the campus is thickly developed with shopping malls and housing. But the grounds themselves remain a discordantly serene escape from the surrounding asphalt and traffic.

The campus is protected by local historic preservation regulations, and is also listed as a National Historic District by the federal government.

The current plan calls for the demolition of the historic Lawnside home on the west edge of the campus to make way for the two-story health center.

The health department needs the permission of the Historical Commission to move forward with the plan because Lawnside is protected from demolition by local preservation regulations, as are the rest of the venerable buildings on the campus.

At a June 27 meeting of the Architectural Committee, which advises the commission, appointees appeared skeptical of the department’s position that there was no possible alternative to the present plan.

The Preservation Alliance of Greater Philadelphia, an advocacy group, also objected to the demolition of Lawnside. Although the structure is now dilapidated, and the ground around it strewed with broken glass and litter, it was built in 1859 and once served as home for the Friends Hospital’s superintendent.

The group has also criticized the general layout of the proposal, saying that it would forever change a site that was deemed significant enough to be covered by local and national historic protections.

“The health center is a big building, so the whole bucolic setting that makes this a National Historic Landmark District would be disrupted permanently,” said Steinke. “We are so cavalier with our historic assets.”

The Preservation Alliance has asked that the health department reveal the 44 other sites it rejected. Quiñones Sánchez argues that the Frankford Transportation Center site could have been more heavily utilized as well.

The Historical Commission meets on Friday at 9 a.m., when the health department will make its pitch for permission to move forward with demolition of Lawnside.

Local neighborhood groups have only learned of the Friends Hospital plan in recent weeks, but are also skeptical — although they take no official stance on it yet.

“It’s in the wrong place,” said Terry Heiser, vice president of the Northwood Civic Association. “It has limited transit and will be serving people who are elderly, who lack financial resources. For them to travel to that location, they’re going to have to cross a very busy 12-lane highway.”

The health department argues that the human toll of unmet health needs in the Northeast outweighs such site considerations. More medical capacity accessible to those without insurance was needed yesterday.

Bettigole argued that the current layout is the only one possible. It is large enough to accommodate a sprawling two-story building, which the health department prefers because it helps ensure that patients — many of whom do not speak English as a first language — won’t get lost trying to navigate a multistory building with elevator banks.

She also said that the site enjoys access to parking for cars and transit, given the heavy bus routes on Roosevelt Boulevard.

“If we’re able to build it, we will finally address what’s been a decades-long problem,” Bettigole said in June. “If we could have … found another site, we absolutely would have done it.”