Residents approved a senior medical center to be located in the Mayfair Shopping Center.
The Mayfair Civic Association on April 9 held a special zoning meeting for a proposed Dedicated Senior Medical Center to be located in the Mayfair Shopping Center. The civic association voted to approve the request with provisos.
The applicant approached the civic association because it was seeking to combine two tenant spaces (space 1 & 2) to create one tenant space for its center. The applicant would then have a hearing with the Zoning Board of Adjustment for approval to combine these spaces to operate as one center.
Dedicated Senior Medical Center, a Chenmed Company, was founded over 25 years ago in Miami Gardens, Florida. The company has over 50 clinics nationwide, hoping to make Pennsylvania its seventh state. The company plans on building four centers in the city.
The proposed Mayfair center is approximately 8,000 square feet and will have 19 examination rooms, with the ability to staff up to six physicians and serve 2,700 members, according to Thomas Shanahan, general manager for the Philadelphia market of Dedicated Senior Medical Center. Members of the civic association were able to see the floor plan through a packet of papers with the dimensions of each room.
The group stressed the need for affordable senior care in the area and claimed that Mayfair would be well suited with one of its centers in the neighborhood.
Over 18,000 seniors live within a 10-minute drive of the Mayfair center, according to chief marketing officer Marke Dickinson.
Some members expressed concerns about traffic and parking within that area of the shopping center, but the group says it will be able to pick up seniors within a several-mile radius and drop them off at the center to help combat the concerns.
The group also talked in detail about its commitment to hiring in the community.
“Ninety-some percent of the employees will be local,” said Shanahan.
Another major concern addressed by the group was its non-use of opioids at the center.
Dr. Sue Schayes, chief medical officer, said she was cognizant of the opiate dependency issues going on in Northeast Philadelphia and stated the practice does not dispense narcotics on site. The chronic conditions that most of the centers patients deal with are heart related and diabetes, according to her.
The civic association voted to approved the variance with provisos relating to the commitment of not distributing opioids on site.
The group hopes to open up its center in Mayfair in the fall. ••
John Cole can be reached at JCole@bsmphilly.com
