Wright Center Chief Administrative Officer Ron Daniels stands in front of the podium at Wednesday’s Zoning Hearing Board meeting in Wilkes-Barre. Behind him is Sam Steiner, of the construction engineering company Verdantas.
Margaret Roarty | Times Leader
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WILKES-BARRE — The Wright Center will be expanding its North Pennsylvania Avenue campus to include additional space for its medical clinic and a community center. The city’s Zoning Hearing Board approved several aspects of the project at Wednesday’s meeting.
The health care facility was approved for a special exception to construct a three-story, 45,000-square-foot building expansion at 169 N. Pennsylvania Ave., a property located within a c-4 zoning district.
Wright Center Chief Administrative Officer Ron Daniels explained to the board that the additional clinic area will allow physicians more space to treat long-term care patients, meaning patients who have long-term health issues like diabetes, high blood pressure, or high BMI, and often require one- to two-hour consultations.
“One of the floors out of the three is going to be five different care teams that will help with these longer appointments so that they don’t feel rushed when they’re in the regular clinical space,” Daniels explained.
Another floor will be used for graduate medical education.
According to Daniels, The Wright Center currently has 200 medical residents who rotate through clinics and local hospitals in Scranton and Wilkes-Barre on a three-year basis.
“Right now the didactic trainings and the classroom trainings are conducted primarily in Scranton and we’d like to expand that and have some of that classroom space here in Wilkes-Barre,” the administrative officer said.
Hours of operation for the educational center will most likely be the same as the clinical hours, which are 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., Monday through Saturday.
The Wright Center was also approved for a variance for the expansion to include a 4,000-square-foot community center on the first floor, which will primarily be used for internal purposes, such as board meetings.
Daniels said the community center will also give the facility the ability to hold different programs and trainings for the community. Any event held in the community center will organized by The Wright Center and will not be rented out.
The board also approved a special exception for the joint use of the parking lot for both the community center and medical clinic.
Sam Steiner of the construction engineering company Verdantas explained that once the facility is built, it will have 130 parking spaces between the lot across the street and the lot next to the building.
The lot across the street will have 30 of those parking spaces, which Daniels said will primarily be used by employees.
The Wright Center was also approved for a variance to waive any screening requirements pertaining to that proposed parking area.
Steiner explained that any kind of screening would not match the aesthetics of the surrounding area, and any six- or four-foot fence or scrub might obstruct lines of sight.
“So, just to keep with the character of the neighborhood, we were gonna keep that free of any vertical structures, but still abide by the actual parking setting,” Steiner explained.
There was some back and forth between board members regarding the screening, but they ultimately voted unanimously to waive the requirement.
According to Daniels, the expansion will be a New Markets Tax project.
The Wright Center currently has 12 practice locations that predominately serve the Medicaid and Medicare population. Each practice provides medical and behavioral health, and three practices provide dental services.
Also at the meeting, the Zoning Hearing Board approved CKPA2 LLC for a special exception to change a vacant 3,000-square-foot building located at 285 Old River Rd. from a nonconforming use to a laundromat containing 40 machines and a variance to waive three parking spaces.