Methadone Clinic Moving To Newhallville

A methadone clinic and healthcare nonprofit plans to relocate from Long Wharf to Newhallville, after purchasing a Dixwell Avenue former middle school building for $2.45 million. 

That’s one of the city’s latest local property transactions, as recorded on New Haven’s land records database. (The full list of transactions appears lower down in this story.)

On Dec. 14, APT Foundation Inc. bought the two-story brick school building at 794 Dixwell Ave. — along with eight smaller adjacent parcels of surface parking lots on Dixwell Avenue, Elizabeth Street, and Cherry Ann Street — from Elm City College Preparatory Inc. for $2.45 million. 

The City of New Haven and the Town of Hamden (the properties in question straddle the municipal border, with the former school building sitting on the New Haven side of the line) last appraised those nine properties as worth a combined total of $8,338,600.

The 1931-built school building last housed half of the Elm City College Preparatory Middle School. The Achievement First network charter school relocated to Fair Haven after its board of directors voted in 2019 to save money, sell the Newhallville building, and consolidate its seventh and eighth graders with the rest of the school’s Grade K‑6 students on James Street.

APT Foundation President and CEO Lynn Madden told the Independent during a recent phone interview that her nonprofit — which specializes in treating people addicted to opioids, alcohol, and other substances — plans to relocate its outpatient medical services and administrative offices from its current rented space at 1 Long Wharf Dr. to 794 Dixwell Ave.

Moving out of rented space and into a building that the APT Foundation owns will be ​“a lot more cost effective and patient friendly, because we can design [the space] to suit our patient care needs,” Madden said. 

“Moving out of 1 Long Wharf is part of our long-term strategic plan to really own what we use for patient care.” She said APT has been ​“searching for property [to buy] in New Haven for several years.”

The property sale and planned move mean that the APT Foundation will be relocating an outpatient methadone clinic that currently treats 395 patients who struggle with opioid use disorders from Long Wharf to Newhallville. 

Methadone is an ​“opioid agonist” that is federally approved for the treatment of people addicted to heroin and other similar drugs, and that ​“reduces opioid craving and withdrawal and blunts or blocks the effects of opioids,” per the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. The APT Foundation already runs a long-standing — and controversial — methadone clinic on Congress Avenue in the Hill.

“We have a primary care unit that would deliver all your typical medical services,” Madden said about what kinds of services APT Foundation plans to move to 794 Dixwell. 

That includes checking out a sore throat or conducting a physical; providing ​“medicine for opioid use disorder”; providing medications for psychiatric illness; and, in some cases, ​“intensive outpatient services” that would have a patient spend up to nine hours a week at the site. She said 794 Dixwell Ave. will not offer any inpatient medical services.

“A small number of persons who receive methadone” will be relocated to the new Newhallville location, Madden said, referring to the 395 patients who currently receive methadone at 1 Long Wharf Dr.

That’s ​“by far our smallest methadone treatment” program, she said, making up roughly one-third of the number of methadone patients who receive treatment at the Congress Avenue site. 

Madden also said that the 395 methadone patients whose care will be moved from Long Wharf to Newhallville are ​“who we consider to be the most stable patients” treated by APT, as opposed to those treated at the Hill site, who tend to be APT’s ​“newer [methadone] patients.” She added that 292 of those 395 patients come to the APT Foundation for treatment only once per month. 

Overall, she said, the APT Foundation’s 1 Long Wharf Dr. site as a whole — not just its methadone treatment program — currently sees roughly 100 patients per day. ​“A lot of our services are walk-in services,” she said. ​“We’re hoping we’ll see the same people” when the clinic moves to 794 Dixwell in Newhallville. 

Madden said that the APT Foundation plans to undertake ​“significant renovations” of the newly acquired Dixwell Avenue site to convert it into a medical care and office building. She said APT plans to go before the City Plan Commission in February for a site plan review of the proposed renovations, which should not involving knocking any part of the existing structure down. ​“We’re mostly working with what exists,” she said. 

When the conversion is done, she said, roughly 80 staff — including clinical providers and APT’s entire central administration team — will relocate to the new Newhallville site.

Treatment Needed In The Neighborhood

Madden was asked how the APT Foundation plans on being a good neighbor to the surrounding Newhallville community, given the intensive impact that a methadone clinic can have on a neighborhood. 

Hill neighbors have criticized the APT Foundation in recent years for allowing loitering, substance abuse, and dangerous and illegal activity to take place outside of its Congress Avenue site. APT has responded by beefing up security at that Hill site, and by arguing for the importance of supporting medication-assisted treatment programs as an opioid epidemic ravages the nation.

“The city desperately needs these services,” Madden said about the planned methadone-clinic move to Newhallville. 

She said the APT Foundation has been providing this type of treatment for more than 50 years. ​“Virtually all of the people attending regular services at 1 Long Wharf are New Haven residents or from close by New Haven,” she said.

“We are committed to providing safe and evidence-based treatment for people, and have done so for all of our locations.”

She added that, in general, the people who are in treatment are not the biggest problems for a neighborhood. ​“Often, people who have difficulty in the community haven’t been able to get treatment.”

Elizabeth Street resident Marcus Pearson welcomed the news of a methadone clinic moving to the neighborhood.

“I think that’s a good idea,” he said while walking down the block and towards Dixwell Avenue near the site of the vacant former school building. ​“There’s definitely a lot of people with drugs” and addiction issues around here, he said.

That’s not unique to Newhallville, he added. ​“You see it everywhere in New Haven.” He said that a treatment facility dedicated to helping people overcome opioid addiction is a plus.

Pearson said that Elizabeth Street is, and has long been, a good place to live. ​“This is a good street,” he said. He said many of the people on the block own their own homes, giving it a sense of stability and neighborhood cohesion.

Newhallville Alder Devin Avshalom-Smith, who represents the ward that includes 794 Dixwell Ave., told the Independent that he doesn’t have enough information about the APT Foundation’s planned move to offer too detailed of a comment. 

He said the Independent’s phone call and request for comment marked the first time he had heard about APT’s property purchase and relocation plans. (Indeed, Madden told the Independent during her phone interview with this reporter that ​“we haven’t really done too much” community outreach in Newhallville about APT’s plans. She did say her organization has scheduled a ​“pre-meeting” with the City Plan department to talk about the renovation project in advance of going through site plan review.)

“I look forward to working with them,” Avshalom-Smith said about the APT Foundations. ​“Tons of folks [in the neighborhood] need substance abuse treatment. It’s a service that has to be provided. But it’s hard for me to say anything [else about APT’s plans], not having more information.”

The state and the country have seen a sharp uptick in opioid overdoses and deaths since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Even with that surge, Madden told the Independent, the APT Foundation has not seen an increase in its patient census since the start of Covid-19.

“From what we can ascertain, our patients and our staff are doing really well,” she said, even with all of the challenges of continuing to come to work and receive treatment during a global pandemic.

She said the APT Foundation has focused during this time on providing its patients with education about the dangers of fentanyl, on passing out overdose-reversing treatments like naloxone, on providing masks and Covid-19 vaccinations (the APT Foundation has a vaccination mandate for its staff), and on being ​“very mindful of the vulnerabilities of our patients and our staff members.”

Recent Property Sales Roundup

In other recent local property transactions:

• On Dec. 10, the downtown-based biopharmaceutical company Biohaven purchased the Quinnipiack Club building at 221 Church St. and an adjacent parking lot at 208 Orange St. from Chalres Noble III’s 221 Church Street LLC for $4.1 million. The Church Street property last sold for $1,940,000 in 2010, and the city las appraised the two parcels as worth a total of $5,736,700. Click here for a full story about that sale.

• On Nov. 30, the Quincy, Mass.-based holding company HIPCF I New Haven LLC, which is controlled by The Grossman Companies, bought the single-story medical office building at 137 Water St. from Michael Santoro’s Phoenix Realty Development LLC for $4.3 million. The property last sold for $970,000 in 2008, and the city last appraised the property as worth $3,275,300.

• On Dec. 18, a Torrington-based company called O&G Industries Inc., which is controlled by Gregory Oneglia, Kenneth Merz, and David Oneglia, purchased the single-story industrial building at 424 Grand Ave. from Robert Fecke’s Reclamation Realty LLC for $2,175,000. The property last sold for $230,000 in 2003, and the city last appraised it as worth $972,700.

• Affiliates of Ocean Management spent $740,000 buying a four-family house at 220 Fitch St., a single-family house at 210 Fitch St., a single-family house 202 Fitch St., and vacant land at 216 Fitch St. from Brian Schatz. The city last appraised those four properties as worth a total of $732,000.