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Board OKs St. Joe’s clinic site

Friars sought eviction from Woodruff Street location

St. Joseph’s Addiction Treatment and Recovery Centers plans to move its Woodruff Street outpatient clinic to this building on Broadway, across from Kinney Drugs, in early May. (Enterprise photo — Chris Knight)

SARANAC LAKE — St. Joseph’s Addiction Treatment and Recovery Centers expects to open its outpatient clinic in a new site on Broadway sometime next month.

The village Development Board voted 4-0 Tuesday to approve a site plan application for the project, allowing St. Joseph’s to move the clinic from Woodruff Street to a temporary location at 258 Broadway, next to Aubuchon Hardware.

St. Joseph’s is still finalizing a lease for the site, and the move still needs to be approved by the state Office of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse Services, but CEO Bob Ross told the board that he didn’t see any obstacles ahead.

“We’ve been negotiating with OASAS all along,” he said. “They have seen the floor plan. They understand the location. They understand the parking. So, they have no problems, and I’m optimistic we can finish that approval in a matter of days. And we’ve had exchanges on the lease, so that seems to be non-problematic tonight.

“If we were able to secure approval tonight, my guess is we’d be able to move in probably in early May without any transition problems.”

Provided that happens, St. Joseph’s won’t need to move the clinic to a house it owns on Hayes Lane, next to its main Glenwood Drive campus. That plan, approved by the Development Board last month, sparked a groundswell of opposition from neighboring property owners.

“The location you approved as a potential site on a temporary basis for a year at the last meeting was the only site we had available at that time,’ Ross said. “But we did not stop looking. We were continuing to look, but we didn’t have an alternative at that point. We think we do now, and it looks very promising.”

The Broadway site would draw roughly 15 clients a day seeking substance abuse treatment services. It would be staffed by 3 to 4 people, but not all at the same time, Ross said. He said there’s plenty of parking on the side and behind the building. There are no external changes, other than a sign that would be put up by its far left door. St. Joseph’s plans to sign a one-year lease for the site and look for a more permanent location for the clinic during that time.

Development Board members raised no objections to the plan and thanked Ross and his staff for finding a different site.

“Thank you for moving as quickly as you did to move it to a better location,” said Dave Trudeau, who had voted against the Hayes Lane site.

“We were all cognizant of the concerns from the neighborhood about how temporary the use would be up there (on Hayes Lane),” said board Chairwoman Leslie Karasin. “Having it be so temporary that it’s not even going to be there is a boon, so that’s great.”

Board member Bill Domenico said he talked with the manager of a neighboring business in the same Broadway building who he said was “thrilled” to have the space filled because there would be more sharing of snow plow expenses.

A public hearing wasn’t required for the project during Tuesday’s meeting, but Karasin asked anyone in the audience if they wanted to comment; no one spoke.

The board’s approval includes one condition. St. Joseph’s has to create one handicapped-accessible parking space in front of the building.

St. Joseph’s outpatient clinic has been located on Woodruff Street since 1995. Ross told the Enterprise Monday that they had to move out because the Franciscan Friars of Atonement, who own the building and founded St. Joseph’s, want to sell it. He said during Tuesday’s meeting that there’s a “court-related issue” that’s created some time constraints in moving out of the Woodruff Street site, but he didn’t go into detail.

Records filed in the Franklin County Clerk’s Office indicate that the Friars filed a complaint against St. Joseph’s in August 2015 to recover an unspecified amount of outstanding rent from the organization. The Friars then started an eviction proceeding against St. Joseph’s in August of last year. In January, Franklin County Court Judge John Ellis issued a warrant of eviction but stayed it from being carried out until February.

St. Joseph’s, which claimed it was overcharged rent, subsequently sought to stay the eviction pending an appeal. Ellis ruled in early February that the eviction doesn’t have to be carried out while the appeal is pending, but he ordered St. Joseph’s has to set aside an “undertaking” of $13,000, roughly what it was paying in rent per year, to “protect the Friars from damages from the withholding of the property during the pendency of the appeal.”

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