In September 2024, construction began on a long-awaited healthcare facility at one of East Buffalo's most-traveled intersections. Now, with a summer 2026 opening projected, the Kensington-Bailey Health and Community Center at 3070 Bailey Avenue is in its final construction phase — a visible marker of the public and private investment flowing into a neighborhood that has historically been underserved by medical infrastructure.

The Project and Its Partners

The $20 million facility is being developed by Uniland Development Company as construction manager and developer, in partnership with Evergreen Health — a Buffalo-based provider specializing in primary care, HIV prevention and treatment, behavioral health, and supportive services for individuals and families with chronic illness — and Community Access Services (CAS), which provides re-entry support, employment readiness, and community services. CPL serves as Architect of Record, per CPL's project announcement.

The building is three stories and encompasses 36,000 square feet, rising on a previously abandoned parcel at the intersection of Kensington and Bailey Avenues. The site includes four parcels of land that were vacant and underutilized prior to development. The new facility is designed to be visually integrated with the Bailey Avenue business corridor — stakeholders specifically requested floor-to-ceiling exterior windows on the street-facing facade to create a welcoming glow after dark, according to Buffalo Rising's September 2024 coverage of the groundbreaking.

Services and Community Design

The facility will house comprehensive primary care with multiple exam rooms, a retail pharmacy, HIV prevention counseling, HIV treatment services, Hepatitis C care, gynecological services, mental health and behavioral health counseling, and a food pantry. The building will also include a patient Financial Counseling Center, multi-use meeting rooms with kitchen access available to community groups and block clubs, employment readiness services, re-entry support, senior services space, and office space for community partner organizations, per the project's official website and the Empire State Development groundbreaking press release from September 12, 2024.

The design intentionally creates flexible, co-located space for multiple organizations to serve patients and community members in a single location. This model — sometimes called a health and community hub — reduces the transportation burden on patients who might need to visit multiple service providers on different days. It directly addresses what Evergreen Health identified as the core problem: the nearest medical center serving this neighborhood had been 1.5 miles or a 30-minute walk away, creating a significant barrier for residents without vehicles.

Funding and Economic Impact

Empire State Development's Restore New York Communities Initiative provided a $1 million grant through Erie County to support the project, per the ESD groundbreaking announcement. The $20 million project is primarily financed through Evergreen Health and CAS's capital programs, with the state grant serving as gap financing for a site that required environmental assessment and infrastructure work on the four previously vacant parcels.

The project is projected to retain 34 jobs and create 21 new permanent jobs between Evergreen Health and Community Access Services, in addition to an estimated 89 temporary construction jobs generated during the build phase. Those construction jobs — in carpentry, mechanical, electrical, plumbing, and finish trades — represent direct economic activity for Buffalo's construction workforce in a neighborhood that is also seeing investment from the Broadway Market renovation, Towne Gardens rehabilitation, and other concurrent public and private projects.

What Healthcare Construction Entails at This Scale

A three-story, 36,000-square-foot medical office and community services building is a meaningful mid-size commercial healthcare construction project. Unlike a standard office building of similar size, a healthcare facility of this type requires medical-grade plumbing for exam rooms and treatment areas, specialized HVAC systems with filtration and negative pressure capability for clinical spaces, ADA-compliant corridors and exam room clearances throughout, pharmacy-specific secure storage and dispensing infrastructure, and a fire suppression and egress design that meets the more stringent requirements of the International Building Code's health care occupancy classifications. The retail pharmacy component adds a controlled-substance security requirement that affects both the construction phase (vault installation, controlled-access rough-in) and the final fit-out. Managing these overlapping specialty scopes — while coordinating with Evergreen Health and CAS on their specific clinical and operational requirements — is precisely the kind of complex commercial project that benefits from an experienced CM like Uniland, which has delivered multiple healthcare and institutional facilities across the Buffalo region.

Construction and Delivery

Uniland Development, one of Western New York's largest commercial developers, is overseeing construction management. The Kensington-Bailey facility's timeline from groundbreaking (September 2024) to anticipated opening (summer 2026) is approximately 21 months — consistent with standard timelines for a three-story commercial healthcare building of this scope, and achievable given the straightforward site configuration on four formerly vacant parcels without significant existing structural constraints.

The project is listed as projected to open in summer 2026 on Uniland's active development portfolio page. When complete, it will be one of the more tangible examples of how public grant funding, community health mission, and commercial development expertise can be combined to deliver healthcare infrastructure to communities that the private market has historically underserved. The facility's opening will mark a before-and-after moment for the Kensington-Bailey corridor — transforming four vacant lots into a building that serves thousands of East Buffalo residents with healthcare services they previously had no convenient way to access. It also marks the completion of one of the more consequential small-grant-funded construction projects Erie County has produced in recent years.

Sources

Empire State Development — Evergreen Health Construction Groundbreaking, September 12, 2024
CPL — Kensington-Bailey Community Care Center Groundbreaking, September 12, 2024
Buffalo Rising — Work Starts on East Side Health Center, September 16, 2024
Kensington-Bailey Project Official Website
Uniland Development — Properties Under Development