LOCATION CONTROVERSY
City and neighbours at odds over plan to open facility for recovering addicts
Former addict John Button is hoping to open Launchpad Recovery and Restoration Home, which would have zero tolerance for drugs or alcohol, on Drouillard Road in the heart of Ford City. Ford City boosters laud Button’s cause but say the location would stymie efforts to lure new businesses to the block and revitalize the area.
A recovering addict who says he “just wants to take care of four or five people” by establishing a dry house on Drouillard Road has run into vehement opposition from Ford City residents and business owners who say it doesn’t fit with the area’s burgeoning revival.
“Ford City is kind of on a roll,” with five or six new businesses moving into the long-depressed area, Drouillard Place executive director Marina Clemens said Wednesday, citing lower crime rates, robust resident groups, an exciting strategy to foster live/ work arrangements for young entrepreneurs and city programs in the pipeline that will encourage even more investment.
As the leader of a well-regarded social services agency, she said she would never play the Not-In-MyBackyard card against a rooming house for recovering addicts.
“If they’re providing help for people in recovery, that’s a wonderful thing to do,” she said.
But the problem is that this lodging home is being proposed for a building in the 1000 block of Drouillard, right in the two-block section where the commercial regeneration is supposed to be clustered.
“When I look at how far we’ve come, we don’t need to go backwards,” Clemens said.
Alma Usakov, a resident engagement co-ordinator with Ford City Neighbourhood Renewal, said many residents are frustrated they only learned about the rezoning application at the last minute — about a week ago. The area already has social services and health centres and doesn’t need this dry house on the area’s main commercial street, she said.
“A lot of people are upset and saying this doesn’t quite fit with the revitalization,” Usakov said.
Many from the neighbourhood are expected to attend Monday’s meeting of the city’s planning, heritage and economic development standing committee, to speak against the rezoning application. But city staff are recommending the rezoning. A report from city planner Justina Nwaesei notes that there’s a combination of residential and commercial in the area. And while the building has been an office for at least 37 years, it looks like a house.
“The existing built form on the subject land has a residential character, which suggests that the proposed lodging house is an appropriate use in the subject area,” she writes.
In an interview Wednesday, she said the rezoning conforms with the rules set out in provincial planning policies and the city’s official plan. “And based on my analysis those areas have been satisfied and as such there’s no reason to recommend otherwise.”
John Button, the man hoping to open the Launchpad Recovery and Restoration Home, is five years drug-free and believes the key to helping addicts caught in the cycle of homelessness and jail is to provide them a place to live and support them with love.
“I’ve been blessed by the grace of God to be released from the chains of addiction and drug dealing and assaults and going to jail, I’ve been released from a $2,000-a-day habit,” he said. “I’m just trying to move forward with helping people in recovery, helping people with affordable living and helping people not be a detriment to society.”
The house will provide rooms for four or five people at a time, said Button, who pointed out there are several other dry houses (homes usually run by peers that allow absolutely no drugs or alcohol) operating in the city, some without the lodging-house designation, which requires regular inspections and minimum standards set by the city. He said he wants to follow the rules so he’s not suddenly shut down and forced to toss people out on the street.
He said he understands why some people oppose his plan. “But that area of town needs this so bad,” he said, suggesting that most services for addicts are downtown or in the west end.
But in comments provided to the planning department, Windsor Police Service planner Barry Horrobin said the recovery home is better suited for a residential area. “A tremendous amount of work has been undertaken over the past several years to revitalize Ford City, with many successes having been realized,” he said, arguing that changing the zoning from commercial to noncommercial “is counter to all the work that has been building in this neighbourhood over the past several years.”
The Ford City Business Improvement Association wrote that it is “vehemently opposed” and “objects in the strongest terms” to the rezoning. The BIA has been working to restore Drouillard back to the “hub of business activity” it was in the past and is enthused about new city hall initiatives to encourage investment. In December, business leaders met with an expert to chart the corridor’s path toward revitalization.
“We want to bring back the businesses, we want to make that a vital commercial area and a ‘dry house’ does not fit into that,” BIA executive director Bridget Scheuerman said Wednesday. “We’re not biased against what they’re trying to do. We just want businesses there, not residential.”
The two-storey building is more than 90 years old, and appears to have originally been used as a residence, according to the city report. But records from 1937 show it being used as a doctor’s office, and its main floor has been used for offices for about 37 years. It had been the location for a methadone clinic, a women’s centre, and a headquarters for Ford City Neighbourhood Renewal. The AIDS Committee of Windsor sold it last year to Colchester Bar and Grill owner Julie Appleby, who has a son with Button.
She said she bought it after receiving an inheritance and deciding to “pay it forward” by buying the house so Button — who was a “mess” for 20 years until entering recovery five years ago — could help people with their recovery. She said the people opposed to the home don’t understand the good it will do.
“Drouillard Road needs to be improved and this will help improve it.”