Local Dermatologist’s Practice Gets a New Home

The former site of the Bank of America building at 17 Church Hill Road near the corner of Main Street is getting a long-awaited makeover. Dermatologist Dr. Robert Patrignelli is building a new medical office to house his practice.

The bank was torn down to make way for the new structure and construction began in June. The building had always housed banks in the past—Shawmut Bank and Fleet Bank among them, and it looked a bit different from the rest on the street, which are old houses, some of which have been converted into businesses.

This is the first time the site will be home to something besides a bank, according to Graham Bisset, Trumbull’s Building Official. “The town was trying to buy that piece of property and they couldn’t come to a deal,” said Bisset. He said the town’s plan would have been to use the building to house government departments that needed more space.

Patrignelli said that he and architect and construction head Joe Mingolello of the Mingolello and Hayes architectural firm agreed to make the new building more in line aesthetically with the others on the street. “We said, ‘Why don’t we build a building that looks just like a house?’” Patrignelli said.

The doctor, who is moving from his office suite at 965 White Plains Road, said he is “nervously excited” about the move. Patrignelli lives in Fairfield with his wife and three young children. His practice handles general dermatological issues and skin cancer and also offers cosmetic treatments like Botox, collagen, laser hair removal, laser facial rejuvenation and microdermabrasion.

Patrignelli, whose family owns the Corner Deli on Main Street in Trumbull,
grew up in Monroe and attended Fairfield University, and then went on to
Georgetown Medical School.

Patrignelli said he worked at the deli as a teenager, and that he still has
patients come in all the time who remember him from his days behind the deli counter.

After medical school, Patrignelli completed a residency in internal medicine at Bridgeport Hospital and then a dermatological residency at Tulane University. He has been in practice as a dermatologist since 1998, moving to the White Plains Road office in January 2003 to begin private practice.

As a dermatologist, he said, “I try to take care of as much as I can. I will do [any procedure] I feel comfortable doing and anything I know someone can do better I will refer them.”

“Everyone wants a good result and as much as I would like to be someone’s hero, I have no problem sending them somewhere else if I know they can do it better than I could,” said Patrignelli.

Patrignelli is excited about the possibilities of the project, which was approved by the Planning and Zoning Commission in December of last year. Construction is projected to be finished in February.

Town planner Bill Levin said that, “The previous building was in a similar
footprint. That means it covers a similar area on the ground,” so the main
difference will be in the addition of an extra floor. The building will have brick on the first floor and shingles on the upper floor with no parking
visible from the street.

Patrignelli, whose office will be on the second floor, said he just started to look for a doctor to rent out the first, specifying that he wants the building to be strictly a medical building.

Aside from finding a tenant, “There’s a lot of landscaping that is going to be done,” Patrignelli said. Fences and gardens will be put in, and when he moves in as he is planning to in the spring, he said, the flowers will be at their best, showing off the new space to its greatest advantage.

And, he said, “So many other things are going to go up before it’s finished.”

One of these is a unique feature for patients: every examining room will have a flat screen TV playing the Food Network.