Group to Open Clinic for West Valley Indigent in ’99

WINNETKA — El Proyecto del Barrio, a nonprofit group that operates two health clinics in the San Fernando Valley, plans to open a clinic to serve the West Valley’s indigent in 1999.

The new clinic will be financed with $4.6 million in revenue bonds sold by the California Health Facilities Financing Authority, a state agency that issues tax-exempt financing to nonprofit health facilities throughout the state, authorities announced Wednesday. The agency also has approved an additional $423,000 in loans to pay for medical equipment.

The clinic, to be called the Center for a Healthy Community, is slated to open in January 1999, said Lorraine Gutierrez, vice president of El Proyecto del Barrio. Construction will begin next month and is expected to cost about $3.8 million.

The clinic will open at 20800 Sherman Way, the site of Canoga Park Hospital before it closed in 1989. Officials will hold a ground-breaking ceremony there at 10 a.m. today.

The clinic will be about 27,000 square feet in size and will serve about 20,000 patients a year, Gutierrez said.

It will be El Proyecto del Barrio’s only West Valley clinic and the only health center in the area to charge patients on a sliding scale, based on what each patient can afford, said Eric Thomas, operations manager for the California Health Facilities Financing Authority.

El Proyecto del Barrio now runs a temporary clinic near the new site. That clinic will close when the larger one is completed, Gutierrez said.

The clinic has also received a grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and $300,000 in bank loans to acquire the 87,470-square-foot parcel, Thomas said.

El Proyecto del Barrio operates clinics in Pacoima and Panorama City.