Controversial Recovery Center Advances

A community health center’s plans to build a $20 million, 52-bed in-patient addiction recovery center in the Hill won a key approval after an impassioned, divided vote that saw two neighborhood alders argue that the area is already oversaturated with social services.

The Board of Alders took that vote Monday evening during its latest full board meeting in the Aldermanic Chambers on the second floor of City Hall.

Alders voted 13 – 6, with three abstentions, in support of the city’s Livable City Initiative (LCI) selling two publicly-owned parcels at 649 and 659 Howard Ave. to Cornell Scott Hill Health Center for a combined sum of $125,000.

The vote was the latest chapter in a saga that has pitted two public-policy quests against each other: One to address rising, deadly drug addiction, which affects all sectors of society; the other to stabilize lower-income neighborhoods where social services like treatment centers are already concentrated, sometimes bringing with them attendant crime.

Hill Health needs the two parcels in order to build a new addiction recovery center — to include behavioral health services like therapy and yoga and not medication-assisted treatment like methadone — on land it already owns at 232 – 236 Cedar St. The two parcels, at the corner of Howard and Minor, would provide essential parking and access to the planned new building.

The site of the proposed new building is immediately adjacent to Hill Health’s South Central Rehabilitation Center, which already does provide methadone treatment to patients struggling with addiction.

Hill neighbors, who observed the vote, vowed to keep fighting as the plan proceeds to consideration of two more needed regulatory approvals.

Two Hill Alders, Ward 3’s Ron Hurt and Ward 4’s Evelyn Rodriguez, addressed their colleagues from the floor Monday night to voice their opposition to the Hill Health project. They said that their constituents — a half dozen of whom attended Monday night’s meeting in person — have reminded them again and again that the Hill already has a surfeit of substance abuse treatment programs, and that the proposed site is within just a few blocks of Roberto Clemente Leadership Academy, the Boys & Girls Club, and Lulac Head Start.

“There’s many things that our community is lacking,” said Hurt, who initially supported the project before changing course after neighbors criticized him for not first running the health center’s plans by the community management team. ​“Another center for recovery is not what we need.”

Hill Health has been a good neighbor in Ward 3 and elsewhere in the community, he Hurt acknowledged. But, he said, he and his constituents simply cannot tolerate having an addiction treatment center within such close proximity of where an estimated 1,000 children pass through every day.

“I’m opposing this because of the quality of life” impact it might have on Hill residents, Rodriguez added. ​“We have had enough.”

She pointed out that Congress Avenue neighbors have struggled for years with patients from the APT Foundation — a controversial methadone clinic right across from John C. Daniels School — loitering on the sidewalks, getting into (sometimes fatal) fights, and doing drugs outside the clinic.

While Hill Health has not had and does not have the same problems with its patient base, Rodriguez said, building another addiction recovery center near a different school is tempting fate.

“Are we going to take that chance?” she asked.

Hurt and Rodriguez weren’t the only alders to vote against the project. They were joined by Wooster Square Alder Brenda Harris, Quinnipiac Meadows Alder Gerald Antunes, Beaver Hills Alder Brian Wingate, and West Rock/West Hills Alder Michelle Sepulveda.

Hill Alder Dave Reyes and Fair Haven Alders Ernie Santiago and Jose Crespo all abstained from voting, Reyes said he decided not to cast a vote because the Hill Health project is slated to receive state bond funding, and he works for an area of state government that helps decide where such bonding is directed. Santiago said he abstained because his wife works for Hill Health.

Not every Hill alder stood up to oppose the project, however.

Hill/City Point Alder Dolores Colon, who is retiring from the board at the end of this year after nearly two decades on the local legislature, said that she has never heard of any problematic incident ever taking place outside of Hill Health’s current methadone clinic, right next to the site of the proposed new center. Hill Health has always been a good neighbor to the Hill, she said, and this project appears to be a responsible one.

“This is not the APT Foundation,” she said.

Colon proposed, and the alders unanimously adopted, an amended to the city land sale that requires Hill Health to follow through on two commitments that it had previously made to neighborhood residents: That someone from the community have a seat on the prospective new center’s board of directors. And that the community management team can use the new building’s conference room for neighborhood meet-ups.

After the vote, Hill North Community Management Team Chair Howard Boyd said that he and his neighbors plan on continuing their opposition to the project as it now makes its way to the Board of Zoning Appeals for requested parking relief and then to the City Plan Commission for site plan review.

“We’re not a pushover team,” he said.