CVS-To-Rehab Clinic Conversion Approved

An abstinence-focused drug rehab clinic won its final needed city approval to relocate to the former CVS site at Whalley Avenue and Orchard Street.

Local land-use commissioners signed off on that pharmacy-to-addiction-counseling conversion Wednesday night during the latest monthly City Plan Commission meeting, which was held online via Zoom.

The three commissioners present for the meeting voted unanimously in support of Mid-Western Connecticut Council of Alcoholism, Inc.‘s (MCCA) site plan application to turn the existing ex-CVS building at 215 Whalley Ave. into an outpatient alcohol and drug addiction and mental health clinic. 

Local attorney Carolyn Kone told the commissioners that the 50-year-old nonprofit will be relocating services it’s provided out of rented office and clinic space up the road at 419 Whalley for the past decade. 

The ex-CVS site will be home to ​“alcohol, drug, gambling, and mental health services by means of counseling and medication prescriptions,” she said. ​“There is no medication that they will dispense at this location. There is no methadone. This is not a methadone clinic.”

She said MCCA plans to begin construction in the fall. It should take roughly six months to finish the interior renovations and for the nonprofit to move its services from its current location at 419 Whalley down to 215 Whalley.

She also said there will be ​“significant landscaping improvements, improvements to the parking, sprucing up the exterior with new windows, signage, and painting,” among other fixes.

The City Plan Commission’s approval of the conversion comes roughly nine months after MCCA purchased the ex-CVS property last September for $2.5 million. Kone said the nonprofit’s leaders have held six community meetings since then, winning letters of support from Beaver Hills Alder Tom Ficklin and Whalley-Edgewood-Beaver Hills Community Management Team Chair Rebecca Cramer.

What would the new site’s hours of operations be? asked Commission Vice-Chair Ernest Pagan.

The new MCCA site would be opens Mondays through Thursdays from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. and on Fridays from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m.

“The different group therapies run at different times, so people are not all there at the same time. But they want to offer evening hours for people that work,” she said. The site won’t be open on weekends.

And how many clients does MCCA currently see at its New Haven location? Pagan asked.

As of last September, she said, the local clinic had a total of 249 clients, seeing on average 66 per day. As of January, that average daily census number was up to 74. She said that three quarters of the current Whalley Avenue program’s clients come from New Haven, with the remainder coming from surrounding towns like West Haven, Hamden, and Branford.

Before joining her colleagues in voting in support of the conversion plan, Commission Chair Leslie Radcliffe repeated that MCCA has been in the neighborhood for a decade. ​“It’s not something new being introduced into the community,” she said.

“The fact that there is not going to be any distribution of any medications or products, I think, would probably add some comfort to the community, that it’s providing mostly counseling and reporting services,” she said. 

Of course, being at such a prominent corner at Whalley and Orchard, this new site ​“will stand out a little bit more as opposed to where it was before” as one service among many renting space at 419 Whalley. 

Radcliffe also recognized that some neighbors may be concerned given that there’s a correctional facility right next door, and a package store across the street. ​“There’s issues in the community that don’t have anything to do with you,” she said to the MCCA representatives, but that still might drive some hesitation among neighbors when seeing that yet ​“another agency” is coming to their community.

But this group seems to have won the support of neighbors through its community outreach, she said. And ​“there is a need for this type of program. … The way that you have been running this program in the past” bodes well for this new location to ​“not become an issue for the community.”

After the commissioners approved MCCA’s site plan application, the nonprofit’s director, John D’Eramo, told the board what he said he has committed to the community management team members he’s spoken with.

“I am available, and I always will be,” he said. ​“If there’s any area of concern, I’ll be right with them and I will address.”