One neighborhood health center in Rochester's northeast side celebrated more than just Mardi Gras on Fat Tuesday.
For the second year, the Anthony L. Jordan Health Center has used Mardi Gras as a way to invite residents out for food, music, and to learn more about Jordan, their services, and their partners.
“Mardi Gras is just a time of just fun and excitement, and friendships and family,” Jordan Health's CEO Dr. Janice Harbin said. "It’s an opportunity to come and see our center, ask questions, meet our doctors.”
Tuesday night, people gathered to celebrate and dedicate the new center’s extension to Assemblyman David Gantt.
“He is a champion for communities. He speaks out for the community,” Harbin said.
The $3.4 million pavilion has 14 exam rooms throughout four suites with the goal of bringing comprehensive healthcare to the patient.
“Everything that is needed to support that patient is there around the patient," Harbin said. "Our social workers, our dieticians, our financial counselors…”
Gantt and his mother both worked at Jordan before politics, and Gantt was actually the one who suggested the center be renamed after Dr. Anthony Jordan.
“It is important for future generations to understand the history and legacy of why we’re here on this particular corner,” Harbin said.
The assemblyman wasn’t able to make it back from Albany in time for the dedication, but Monroe County Legislature’s minority leader Vince Felder was there – as well as Mayor Lovely Warren- two of Gantt’s political mentees.
“He always lifted as he climbed, he always wanted to reach back and help those that could not help themselves,” Warren said.
Gantt announced he was retiring from the assembly earlier this year, but Harbin says the decision to dedicate the pavilion to him was made long before that announcement.
“Today is a great opportunity to salute him, and thank him for everything he’s done for the community,” Harbin said.
“To understand that whenever they walk into this place, this place has survived in large place thanks in large part to his commitment to it,” Felder said.