Salvation Army may fight treatment center
The group is exploring its options after a drug treatment facility was granted use of land adjacent to a Warren County camp for kids.
The Salvation Army expressed opposition Monday after a Warren County zoning board granted a special-use permit to a proposed residential addiction treatment center to be built on a neighboring property to the Salvation Army’s children’s camp near the Little Miami River.
“The Salvation Army is disappointed in the decision of the Warren County Board of Zoning Appeals to grant a permit for the construction of an in-patient drug-treatment facility on the site of the former Kings Domain Campsite, which adjourns Camp Swoneky, a children’s camp run by the Army. The Salvation Army is exploring all of its options, but the safety of the children and staff at Camp Swoneky remains its top priority,” said a statement issued by Julie C. Budden, divisional director of Development for the The Salvation Army in Cincinnati.
The Salvation Army had previously declined to comment on the process.
In granting the conditional-use permit on Wednesday, June 10,
the zoning board set 15 conditions for the project. It then held a meeting to review the site plan for the 120-acre site on Ohio 350, just east of the Little Miami River.
The Cedar Oaks Wellness Center would be an in-patient drug-treatment facility to be built on the 120-acre former Kings Domain site, at 5778 Ohio 350, in Washington Twp., Warren County.
At the June 10 hearing, a lawyer representing the Salvation Army asked the zoning board to require several protections, including a 4,000foot long berm and fence to separate their camp from the neighboring property.
Ben Yoder, lawyer for Cedar Oaks, said the board would be violating the Americans With Disabilities Act if it approved the measures sought by Camp Swoneky since Cedar Oaks would be an institutional care facility.
On Wednesday, the county zoning board is to issue its decision on the site plan for the project.
Steve Cesler, who had been on the Kings Domain Camp board, purchased the property through a limited liability corporation for $1.2 million at a sheriff ’s sale in September 2018.
On May 12, Cesler was the last witness called by Yoder during the 4½ hour hearing attended by more than 70 people, most via remote connections due COVID-19 orders.
In addition to witnesses and a lawyer for Camp Swoneky, residents spoke for and against the development.