The Point: Smithtown addiction facility may get zoned out
When Charlie Murphy’s Residence opened in 1942, Alcoholics Anonymous had only existed for seven years and its instruction manual, originally titled "Alcoholics Anonymous: The Story of How More Than One Hundred Men Have Recovered From Alcoholism," had only been in print for three.
But in 2016 the famed Fort Salonga facility, which housed and rehabilitated thousands of Long Island addicts over eight decades, burned down.
And since the time Charlie Murphy’s was established, the neighborhood around it has grown up.
At 6 p.m. Tuesday, investors hoping to again use the site for an addiction treatment facility will appear before the Smithtown Board of Zoning Appeals, opposed by a local civic association and neighbors fighting to stop it. The proposed facility is for-profit; Charlie Murphy’s was a not-for-profit.
The neighborhood is residential, both in zoning and character. As long as the treatment facility was operating, and holding 12-step meetings for patients staying there and locals needing a meeting, its use was grandfathered in.
But opponents led by the Fort Salonga Association, which is asking residents to send form letters to elected officials that can be found on its website, say when the rehab burned and stopped operating for more than 12 months, the site lost its right to a zoning exception.
Additional arguments are that the proposed 50 beds of the new facility would double the old facility’s census, and that the rehab would increase traffic, endanger children at a school one-third of a mile away, and bring "violence" and "the dregs of society."
Vincent Trimarco Sr., the attorney for John Bonlarron and William Alvaro, the buyers looking to acquire and reopen the site, told The Point he may argue the use was never abandoned. And, Trimarco points out, similar uses like halfway houses, which this could become instead, are largely exempt from zoning bans under state law.
In previous similar battles, like a rehab in Blue Point proposed by the Seafield Center that never opened and one for eating disorders in Glen Cove proposed by Monte Nido that did, the outcry in the recovery community in favor of the planned facilities was loud.
In this case, it has been more muted.
And elected officials and addiction-treatment advocates say the difference that has them holding their fire and doubling down on due diligence is that they don’t know the operators’ work the way they did Seafield and Monte Nido, which have strong track records here.
Those officials and advocates say they’d like to know more. Opponents would certainly like to say more, and perhaps even hear more, too.
And once more, on Long Island, anxious residents will spell "donnybrook" with the letters "B.Z.A."
Lane Filler is a member of the Newsday editorial board.
