300 turn out for meeting on drug treatment center at Bancroft School

Developer J. Brian O'Neill unveiled at a community meeting Wednesday night some of the details of the drug and alcohol treatment center he wants to create on Haddonfield's Bancroft School campus.

His Haddonfield Recovery Center of America, one of about 15 he plans to create, would feature boutique, hotel-like accommodations and a full continuum of inpatient and outpatient care, O'Neill said.

He ran through slides of daunting statistics about rising rates of drug abuse, including among teenagers; the lack of treatment; and the need for it.

"This is a disease that does not discriminate," he said.

Many in the audience of about 300 who came to the meeting at Haddonfield Memorial High School objected - some angrily, some politely - to putting a treatment facility on a main street near two schools.

Audience members erupted into cheers and hoots, many rising to their feet, after one man who said he was a nurse called the proposed facility "awesome," but said, "My main contention is, it's in the wrong place."

Another audience member, Chris Maynes talked about a family member who had suffered from addiction, showing his concern.

He said drug dealers would come to the community to try to supply people in the recovery center and possibly to Haddonfield Memorial, which is next to the site.

A father of eight, he got on the stage to show O'Neill photographs of his children and asked him to do "your valuable work" somewhere else.

"I'm asking you, from one father to another," Maynes said, "to go home and think about it."

O'Neill said he would and thanked Maynes for coming.

The developer, responding to each speaker, held his ground, kept his cool, and made his case for the need for quality treatment in a community setting.

O'Neill said he had been doing substance-abuse interventions for 25 years, starting with a friend who was overdosing on heroin.

"Word went out," he said, and he started getting requests to do other inventions, including for family members, friends, and neighbors.

He said he has been frustrated by the high cost of treatment, the lack of access, and the lack of quality.

O'Neill has said he would seek a use variance for the property, though he doesn't believe he needs one. Mayor Jeff Kasko has said he would.

O'Neill has declined to say how much he would be paying for the property, but Wednesday night, he said another of his treatment centers in Massachusetts cost $25 million to acquire and build.

Bancroft has long been looking to sell its Haddonfield campus, which provides services to people with autism and intellectual and developmental disabilities. A 2013 bond referendum that would have allowed the school district to buy the site failed to pass. Another proposal, for Camden County to buy the land for open space, was put on the back burner in the fall.

O'Neill said Wednesday that after the recession, "I made up my mind I'm going to do things that are meaningful."