Allan Appel Photo
Michael Taylor, Shawn Galligan, and Cornell Scott’s Ece Tek Tuesday night at zoning board.
What a difference four months and attending community management team meetings can make.
In November a dozen people and the leadership of the Hill North Community Management team showed up to a zoning board hearing, a united front of community opposition to yet one more addiction treatment center in their beleaguered area.
They were opposing, in its then form, the Cornell Scott-Hill Health Center (CSHHC) proposal to the build a $20 million 52-bed shelter for men and women recovering from addiction on Minor Street between Howard and Cedar to replace an overburdened shelter on Grant Street. The request for needed zoning relief for parking was put on hold.
Roll the clock ahead four months, to Tuesday night’s regular month meeting of the Board of Zoning Appeals (BZA). The proposal came up again. This time, no opposers were in sight. Instead two men, who had been on death’s doorstep, showed up to praise the proposal, which now advances to the next step for regulatory review. They said the program had turned their lives around.
The site on Minor Street where the shelter will be created.
Back in November, the Hill North Community Management Team’s Chair Howard Boyd had said, “It’s near schools, the library, day cares. At this point we’re not supporting it in any form. We already have too many social services” in the Hill.
What changed?
“I think we found common ground,” reported CSHHC Executive Director Michael Taylor.
That common ground includes promising the management team use of one of the rooms in the new facility for monthly meetings. It also entails setting up process to work together on projects to help improve quality of life in the neighborhood.
That might include CSHHC staff working with Boyd and the management team to apply for grants, Taylor added.
The peace followed Taylor and his staff, including Director of Purchasing and Facility Development Shawn Galligan, attending Hill North management team meetings to explain the center’s contributions to the neighborhood as well as allaying residents’ anxieties about a shelter for people coping with addiction.
At January’s management team meeting, for example, Taylor was on hand to lend CSHH’s support to improve traffic safety, a concern of the whole neighborhood, on Columbus Avenue, near CSHHC’s main campus.
Neighbors were also impressed in January to hear Taylor announce that all center employees now earn at least $16 an hour — well ahead of the state’s gradual transition to $15.
At the January gathering Taylor also said concessions have been made: 50 patients who live in Ansonia receiving treatment at CSHHC facilities had been transferred back to receive services in their home towns.
Current facility, which remains, on Cedar and Minor streets, looking northwest.
And then there were conversations with management team leaders and neighbors on just what the new shelter will be — not a flop house for homeless addicts, but rather a place where people enrolled in the program will receive training and counseling for up to 45 days until they are on their feet.
An example of one success story was Joseph Salter, who spoke on behalf of the proposal Tuesday night to the commissioners.
“I went to Grant Streetwhen I was on death’s door, and I’m grateful for what they did. I’ve been sober for 14 months. That program works. Without it, I wouldn’t be here. I’d be dead.”
Salter offers words of gratitude.
Technically Taylor and his team were before the BZA requesting a special exception regarding parking. With the proposed new building to accommodate staff and clients, the total configuration of CSHHC’s parking needs throughout the Hill would be 216, and they currently have 212. So the relief being asked for was only four spots.
As is the procedure, the commissioners did not vote on the matter. They listened to the testimony, sympathetically, especially after Salter’s testimony and that of supportive health care worker. The matter was then sent to the City Plan Commission, which hears the plan on March 18. Then the matter returns to the BZA at its regular April meeting.
If all goes well, Taylor said to expect a closing on the project in the summer and construction to begin this year. The $20 million project is financed by state bonds and an equity contribution from CSHHC, Taylor added.
I recently had to take a neighbor to Cornell Scott-Hill House Center and was impressed with the kindness with which everyone was treated.
YNHH may be highly rated, but it is also a mad house at times and the first rate staff often appears stressed.
CSHC, on the other hand, seemed more low key and workers were taking time with the patients.
Aside from the pharmacy being a bit slow (under staffed), this is a gem of a local resource that serves its population well.