DETROIT-In one of the few cases of development planned in the city, the Community Health and Social Services Center is breaking ground Friday on a $17 million new medical facility. The non-profit raised the money through a capital campaign, lending, and federal and state tax breaks.

The 48,000-square-foot building will replace the company’s current 18,000-square-foot facility, a former Oldsmobile dealership, on West Fort Street just west of Junction on the city’s southwest side. The new building is going up next door, over property that once held a grocery store and parking lot.

With two centers here and in the city’s Midtown area, the group provides preventative and primary care to uninsured and under-insured Detroit residents, and has become a medical center for about 15,000 users. The organization has an emphasis on the underserved African America and Latino populations.

The new facility will allow the group to double the number of exam rooms, triple the number of health care providers and double the amount of patients served, according to CEO Ricardo Guzman. He says the group will be able to hire 50 new full-time employees.

Guzman tells GlobeSt.com that it has taken a few years to get this project going, in part because lending has been so difficult to obtain for Southeast Michigan developments. “It’s been the bug in the stew trying to get companies to finance in the city of Detroit,” he says.

However, the project was in large part paid for by federal New Market Tax Credits and state brownfield tax credits, the latter incentive of the type that new Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder believes should be cut to eliminate about $2 billion of future state losses. “The value to us of the brownfield credit is about $1.7 million. We’re in Detroit, we’re likely to have subsurface pollution, we need having a credit like that. I think when the governor looks at tax credits like this, he’s not looking at all the pros that these credits provide,” Guzman says.