Recovery center loses bid to move into business park
Judge rules overnight stays in inpatient program would violate property covenants
State District Judge Sarah Singleton on Wednesday ruled in favor of business owners opposed to the opening of an addiction treatment center for women with children in the Valdes Business Parkon Santa Fe’s south side.
The Santa Fe Recovery Center is seeking to establish what would be one of the first facilities in the state where women could bring their children with them to inpatient treatment for drug or alcohol abuse.
The only other such facility is a small recovery center for women in Peña Blanca. The group had selected a location formerly used as an urgent care facility by Christus St. Vincent Regional Medical Center.
However, some business owners in the complex pushed back against the potential neighbor, arguing that an inpatient treatment center is effectively a residential facility, which isn’t allowed under the business park’s rules. With a two-thirds majority vote, the park’s governing association voted to reject the treatment center.
Losing the battle for the location doesn’t mean the end of the project, Director Sylvia Barela said.
Moving forward, she said, the Santa Fe Recovery Center most likely will look for a way to remodel its existing space on Lucia Lane, in order to increase the number of women it can serve at that south-side location, and build the necessary infrastructure to keep women and children isolated from male patients in the building.
The Santa Fe Recovery Center in May had filed a legal complaint asking for a summary judgment that would allow it to open its planned facility in the business park.
The litigation centered mostly on the word “residential.”
Jason Kent, an Albuquerque-based lawyer who represented an owner of the Volkswagen and Mercedes-Benz automobile dealerships in the complex, told the judge that the commercial park prohibits “any residential usage, except for facilities incidental to security, and approved in writing by the association.”
Examples of security facilities might include a security trailer where a hired guard would reside while keeping an eye on the property, he explained. Even then, Kent said, the owners association would have to give written approval.
He estimated that the treatment facility would amount to more than 10,000 overnight stays by people at the facility each year. “We’re talking about 16 rooms, with 16 adults and 16 children full time, year in year out, day in day out,” Kent said. “The effect of this, we believe, is clearly to violate this covenant against residential use.”
Paul Mannick, attorney for the Santa Fe Recovery Center, argued that the center would not be a “residential” facility because it wouldn’t be anybody’s home. Though patients would stay overnight for up to 30 days, he said, they wouldn’t live at the facility.
“The express intention, both to the patient and by the institution, is that they’re going to leave at a definite and early time,” Mannick told the judge.
Singleton said her decision to grant a motion to dismiss the case was based entirely on the business park’s written covenant.
“You can’t get around the fact that regardless of what an individual person does there, there are going to be an estimated 10,000 person nights a year at this place. So people will be living there,” Singleton said. “That’s what this covenant prohibits.”
Business owners said they were grateful for the court’s decision.
“My property is my retirement. That is all of it,” said Joel Serra, president of the Valdes Business Park Owners Association and an owner of the Santa Fe Commerce Center building. He said that having a residential property in the complex would decrease the value of his property and, in turn, affect his income.
Serra said allowing one residential facility would create a “slippery slope” that could lead to others trying to move in.
Barela called the decision disappointing. She said the group has been trying to get its program for mothers and children off the ground for almost two years and was in negotiations for the building in the Valdes complex for close to six months.
“We did not believe we would negatively impact their property,” Barela said.
The treatment center signed a purchase agreement for the 2-acre property March 15, with the stipulation that it receive approval from the association.
“We really wanted the best for this program, and that building was it,” Barela said. “I don’t see any way to pursue the building at this point.”
She explained that the former urgent care location had enough bathrooms for 16 women and their children, was up to code, and had a good sprinkler and plumbing system.
She said her organization hasn’t found all of those components in any other building in town.