Camden drug clinic to move to waterfront
The South Jersey Port Corp. board unanimously approved a lease yesterday that will move a drug-treatment facility from downtown Camden, where it is in the way of plans for a new medical school, to the city's Delaware River waterfront.
The South Jersey Port Corp. board unanimously approved a lease yesterday that will move a drug-treatment facility from downtown Camden, where it is in the way of plans for a new medical school, to the city's Delaware River waterfront.
The measure, approved without comment from the governor's appointees on the board, was roundly condemned by activists from the Waterfront South community, who said powerful political forces had forsaken one neighborhood to favor another.
"It is a hell of a day when the revival of one community depends on the death of another," said Patrick Mulligan, assistant director of Heart of Camden, a nonprofit in Waterfront South, where the clinic will be moved.
According to the lease, Northwestern Human Services will move its Parkside clinic, which dispenses methadone to heroin addicts, from its current Broadway location to a building at the port's Broadway Terminal. The company, based in Lafayette Hill, will pay the port $26,000 annually.
The state, through the Division of Addiction Services, will spend $1.9 million to build a 7,500-square-foot facility that will begin serving 650 patients in October. The building will have space to serve more patients in the future.
Parkside's current facility is to be demolished as part of the Lanning Square redevelopment plan, now tied up in the courts by residents and business owners who fear that their property could be seized through eminent domain.
Cooper University Hospital, in conjunction with the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, plans to build a medical school where Parkside is now.
Supporters of the move, particularly those involved in the Lanning Square plan, say the methadone clinic is better situated at the port, where it is blocks from the closest home.
Waterfront South residents, however, say their neighborhood - home to a trash-to-steam plant, sewage facility, and a range of industrial businesses - has given up enough.
"It would be hard to find another area in North America so trampled by powerful, mostly men in white shirts," the Rev. Michael Doyle, pastor of Waterfront South's Sacred Heart Roman Catholic Church, told the board.
"I would wish that people in power would not sit at a long table, but at a cradle of a child, and say, 'What are the rights of the children of Waterfront South?' "
Residents accused the board members, including some who own businesses that have government contracts, of following instructions from political leaders with monetary interests in the Lanning Square plan. They said the clinic would attract drug dealing, prostitution and other crime.
"You are damning the 1,700 residents to more violence," Andrea Ferich said. "You're bringing murder. . . . You will be plagued with violence, sickness and grief by your own greed. . . . The blood of the innocent will be on your hands."
Charles Greene, executive director of Parkside, said the facility would be heavily policed inside and outside. He has said that his clients need a better and bigger building, and that the riverfront site would allow the clinic to work with a nearby needle-exchange program.
Raquel Mazon Jeffers, director of the Division of Addiction Services, said Northwestern Human Services has had great success working with residents of other neighborhoods where it has facilities.
"That would be continued in Camden," Greene said.