Residents hear more about Mill Street addiction facility

Feb. 18, 2016 | G. Michael Dobbs
news@thereminder.com

News analysis

SPRINGFIELD – The politicization of the Western Massachusetts Addiction Treatment Center became official for the community meeting about its placement on Mill Street on Feb. 11.

Earlier that day Governor’s Councilor Michael Albano announced through an emailed press release if he were elected sheriff, he would move the program from the Mill Street location.

Reminder Publications contacted Division of Capital Asset Management and Maintenance (DCAMM), the state agency that selected the new location for the program, and asked if a sheriff could move the program while the lease is in force. As of press time, no answer has been received.

The treatment center was evicted from its longtime location on Howard Street in the South End due to the MGM casino construction. It is temporarily housed in Holyoke in the former Geriatric Authority building.

At one point in the discussion at the J.C. William Community Center on Florence Street, a resident asked Sheriff Michael Ashe Jr. about the future. While the resident said she could trust Ashe about how the addiction center was operated, she was concerned about what would happen under Ashe’s successor, as Ashe is retiring from being sheriff.

Ashe said he is “totally focused” on whom his successor will be. He said that candidates James Gill, an assistant deputy superintendent at the Hampden County House of Corrections and Jack Griffin, a former correctional officer, “both have big hearts.”

Ashe continued, “They want to do the right thing.” He then acknowledged his support for Hampden County House of Corrections Deputy Superintendent Nick Cocchi.

Gill and Griffin were in the audience. Albano and Cocchi were not.

The two-hour meeting was not as contentious as the one at the Maple High Six Corners Neighborhood Council earlier in the week. As the community center is the home of the Revival Time Evangelistic Center, one of the church’s deacons asked the audience to be mindful “you are in a house of worship.”

The audience, largely made up of Maple High and Forest park residents, was introduced to the owner of the building Jeremy Lederer who explained his business redevelops blighted buildings. He cited success in Norwood and Middleboro.

Lederer believes the addiction center in the long unused nursing home building will spur further economic development.

“When you improve a building you attract people,” he said.

Lederer said he plans to landscape the exterior of the building to give it “a college campus kind of environment.”

He also asserted, “It’s only a matter of time before property values will rise.”

Della Blake, the assistant superintendent who leads the addiction center, answered many questions about the program and the people who attend it. She noted that arsonists and sex offenders were not eligible for the program and the majority of the crimes committed by those people in the program were drug related.

Some residents remained highly skeptical of the addiction center and the reasons for its placement in the neighborhood. One person said maintained there was no communication between the sheriff’s office and the community and charged its location was “discriminatory.”

Steve O’Neill of the sheriff’s staff ran down a timeline to indicate the sheriff’s staff had been in communication with the neighborhood council as soon as it realized DCAMM was interested in the property.

The vice president of the neighborhood council, Raymond Ray, lives next door to the site and he recalled how an earlier program placed there by the sheriff resulted in many problems, including the theft of items and litter on his property.

O’Neill replied, “All I can say it’s a new day. Yesterday’s gone.”

 Melvin Edwards, president of the neighborhood council and Ward Three City Councilor, bemoaned the indifference in the neighborhood about the meeting by saying “And yet we don’t have a full room.”

Edwards added, “For the neighbor next door not wanting this is legitimate” and called the DCAMM process – which does not involve neighborhood residents and supersedes municipal land use controls – “flawed.”

Another resident said the neighborhood spent dozens of hours after the tornado participating in a public process to develop a plan for the future of the area and asked how the center, essentially a jail, fit in those plans.

“It’s appalling to me,” she said.

After the meeting, Edwards told Reminder Publications the neighborhood council had started working on a mitigation list that included lighting, security cameras and landscaping, as well as a conduit for complaints and concerns. The tentative list had also included the establishment of the Springfield Police Department substation, which Edwards noted, is out of the control of the Sheriff’s Department.

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