More Bad Urban Planning Policy?

January 28, 2009

Methadone clinic gets home at port

By EILEEN STILWELL
Courier-Post Staff

A methadone clinic that has been a trouble spot in downtown Camden for decades will get a new home inside the Broadway Terminal of the South Jersey Port Corp.

Directors of the South Jersey Port Corp. voted 6-0 Tuesday to lease space within its secure marine terminal to Parkside Recovery Inc., a division of NHS, a private, nonprofit corporation. Based in Layfayette Hills, Pa., NHS operates 580 facilities in nine states.

The move has fostered a six-year bitter war between two neighborhoods in the city. Those living near the current clinic, which dispenses methadone to 700 addicts a day, are glad to see it go. Those living near the new site in Waterfront South picketed the port and lobbied hard to bar the move.

The Broadway marine terminal is a gated compound near the Gloucester City border in a highly industrial area that buzzes round-the-clock with longshoremen, truckers, government inspectors and port employees.

It is 18 blocks south of the clinic's current location at 400 Broadway. The clinic has operated in the shadow of Cooper Hospital for about 30 years. Now that the area is slated for housing, an elementary school and a massive infusion of capital from the health and science sectors, officials determined the clinic sitting on a state-owned property must go.

Recently, the state sold the site to the Camden Redevelopment Authority for $775,000 with funds from the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey. The university plans to build classrooms there for third- and fourth-year medical students who do their clinical training at Cooper. The long-range goal is to expand that program into a four-year medical school.

"I'm pleased the decision has finally been made. It's been a long time coming. At least, the new site is further away from residents and the port is better able to secure these services. A medical school helps Cooper remain an academic center, and it will give us a facility that will make medical education much better in South Jersey," said John P. Sheridan, president and CEO of Cooper Health System.

Monsignor Michael Doyle, pastor of Sacred Heart Church at Broadway and Ferry and a South Camden activist for decades, called the move "barbaric injustice" to a neighborhood already burdened with the Camden County Sewage Treatment plant and a trash-to-steam operation.

"It would be hard to find another area in North America that has been trampled as much by powerful people, mostly men in white shirts, who care little about the poor. A methadone clinic here will have a neon sign for the mind that says "drugs sold here.' "

Patrick Mulligan, assistant director of the Heart of Camden, a grass-roots neighborhood group, called the forces behind the move "the height of hypocrisy."

"You're not doing the city any good to have one neighborhood claim its success depends on the death of another," he said.

Under the agreement, Parkside Recovery will lease 7,500 square feet on the first floor of building P1 and P2 within Broadway Terminal for 10 years for $3.50 a square foot, or $26,256 a year. The port also will provide 40 parking spaces on the opposite side of Broadway and space within the port for a mobile van.

The new site will be 1,300 square feet larger than the current site. The extra room should eliminate some of the concerns expressed by residents that addicts would be spilling out onto the streets.

The new site will have a large waiting room, space for child care for those parents who come for counseling, and better security, said Parkside's Executive Director Charles Greene.

"I just can't wait to get my staff into a decent building," Greene said.

The state Division of Addiction Services is prepared to spend $1.9 million on renovations to the port building.

The port will bid the work out in March and hope to begin construction in April or May. By October, the port expects the old clinic to close and the new one to open, said Marlin Peterson, the newly named assistant executive director of the South Jersey Port Corp., a quasi-state agency.

Also on Tuesday, Kevin Castagnola was named acting executive director Tuesday. Castagnola will fill in temporarily for Joseph Balzano, who is recovering from an illness.

Reach Eileen Stilwell at (856) 486-2464 or estilwell@courierpostonline.com