The current facility on Cedar Street
A controversial planned construction of a new $20 million, 52-bed in-patient addiction recovery center on land that the Cornell Scott Hill Health Corp. community health center already owns at 232 – 236 Cedar St. encountered another delay Tuesday night. Community members hailed it as a victory.
The delay came in the form of a decision by the Board of Zoning Appeals to postpone a planned hearing on the plan.
The plan, which involves the sale of city-owned buildings to Cornell Hill Health on Minor Street and Howard Avenue to make possible an additional space for the addiction recovery facility currently on Cedar, had already been put on hold in October at the Board of Alders.
There, Hill Alder Ron Hurt apologized for offering his formal support for the plan back in the spring without, beforehand, airing the issue and sufficiently soliciting community input.
Hill North Community Management Team Chair Howard Boyd and Secretary Maxine Harris at hearing.
That input was very much in evidence Tuesday night at the regular meeting of the Board of Zoning Appeals.
More than a dozen community members, along with the executive board of the Hill North Community Management Team, showed up as a coordinated group.
They were galvanized by a petition campaign in the fall and a vote by the team’s members in October formally to oppose the project. Their case: simply that the area is already burdened with more than its fair share of health and addiction-related facilities, and some, like the APT Foundation on Congress Avenue continue to create safety and quality of life problems for the neighborhood that are yet to be solved.
On Tuesday night the BZA planned to consider a request for a special exception to allow off-site parking for the proposed new facility to be farther away from the site than the allowed 300 feet.
Even as the the Hill North folks lined up, one by one, to sign up to speak to the commissioners, BZA Chair Mildred Melendez announced that the item had been tabled.
The 149 Minor Street building, across from the Boys and Girls Club, which would become the new facility.
She didn’t say who had tabled it or why.
As the group left the 200 Orange St. hearing room and gathered in the corridor outside to strategize, they were already declaring a small victory.
“It’s a good thing,’ said Leslie Radcliffe. She is a City Plan Commission member who recused herself when the issue came before her. She said she was speaking as a citizen and Hill North neighbor.
“This puts a pause on it and means we have more time to get the outcome we want,” Radcliffe added.
“It’s near schools, the library, day cares,” said the Hill North Community Management Team Chair Howard Boyd. “At this point we’re not supporting it [the project] in any form. We already have too many social services [in the neighborhood].
Commissioners Mildred Melendez and Anne Stone.
Boyd said he had not received a call either from the BZA or from officials at Cornell Scott-Hill Health, although over the past months the group’s CEO Michael Taylor has met with Boyd and his executive board on potential community benefits for the project.
Boyd was at pains to point out that “the CMT doesn’t have anything against those who need treatment. We have enough!”
Boyd acknowledged that there are ongoing talks with Taylor about potential benefits from the project, such as a pledge to let the management team use one of the proposed facility’s rooms as the regular venue for meetings.
The team may require more commitments focusing especially on safety and other benefits. Boyd said he did not want to go into any detail without the team’s lawyer present.
He also conceded that Cornell Scott can build as of right in the zone. The team’s opposition — categorical now but potentially subject to change based on to-be-negotiated benefits — may ultimately be symbolic.
He used a sports analogy: “It’s like a baseball game in the ninth inning. We may be losing this one, but we’re trying to send a message. They took the CMT as a weak one. Even if this goes through, we’re not tolerating it any more.”
I commend my fellow residents for making a stand & showing up to have our voices heard. A rep from Cornell Scott was quoted as saying the building of the 52 bed facility was going to be 'a great benefit to our patients and to all residents of New Haven suffering from the opioid crisis and from other substance abuse'.The Hill North community is saying that although we empathize with those suffering from addiction to opioids, our community suffers from the over proliferation/saturation of substance abuse programs in our community. The truth is drug dealers can be found posting near every drug treatment facility in New Haven because some clients continue to get high ... which results in our Hill streets being littered with used needles, empty dope bags, panhandlers wanting money for drugs, burglaries to get cash for drugs, sex sold for cash to buy drugs, users nodding on our front steps, users shooting up in the open on our streets, users overdosing & dying behind our schools, and broad daylight shootings at hot-spot convenience stores. This is becoming an everyday reality for our children. There are an estimated 42 substance abuse service agencies in the City of New Haven, 24 of them located in the Hill. Although the proposed Cornell facility will replace the one operating in the dilapidated and deteriorating city-owned property on the dead end of Grant Street, moving this program to an area where the Lulac Headstart, the Boys & Girls Club, Robert Clemente Leadership Academy and the Courtland Wilson Library are located is unacceptable. It is unfortunate that we weren't advised of this project earlier and the community where this project is planned to be located, would have been able to weigh in with our concerns, mayb sit at the table to work on alternate solutions...like the city demolishing the Grant Street structure, selling THAT lot to Cornell, & Cornell building there. It is our community...we live here. We have a better sense of what will work.