St. Joseph’s CEO Bob Ross (Enterprise photo — Chris Knight)

SARANAC LAKE — St. Joseph’s Addiction Treatment and Recovery Centers is planning to move its outpatient treatment clinic from Woodruff Street to a temporary site on upper Broadway.

It previously planned to relocate the clinic to a former residential home on Hayes Lane, next to St. Joseph’s main facility on Glenwood Drive, but the proposal sparked opposition from neighboring property owners.

“I think what we’ll wind up with now is a solution that’s in everyone’s best interest,” St. Joseph’s CEO Bob Ross said Monday.

St. Joseph’s has run an outpatient clinic out of a house on Woodruff Street since 1995. It serves roughly 15 clients per day. The building is owned by the Franciscan Friars of Atonement, who founded St. Joseph’s.

However, Ross said they learned recently that the Friars want to sell the property.

“They’ve told us that was their intention, and we’ve been trying to negotiate enough time to find a viable site,” he said. “We’re trying to negotiate getting out as soon as possible so we don’t run into anything that is court dictated.”

St. Joseph’s initially sought village approval to use 12 Hayes Lane, a house it purchased in 2015, to temporarily serve as the outpatient clinic site while a more permanent location is pursued. The village Planning Board had granted St. Joseph’s a special use permit in 2015 to use the property for office and meeting space.

In February, St. Joseph’s request for an amendment to that permit was submitted to the newly created village Development Board, which was created last year under the new land-use code and assumed the functions of both the village Planning Board and Zoning Board of Appeals.

The proposal sparked strong opposition from some nearby residents. In an email to the board, Glenwood Drive resident Barbara Curtis said it would increase traffic “into a residential neighborhood already burdened with heavy traffic to St. Joe’s.

“I am also concerned about the possible impairment of said increased traffic,” Curtis wrote. “Another concern is the term ‘temporary.’ We all know that many times ‘temporary’ turns into permanent.”

Dahinda Road resident Lindy Ellis, the wife of village Trustee Rich Shapiro, said she was concerned about clients driving intoxicated through the neighborhood and homes becoming a target for break-ins.

“The addicted outpatients are not a population that should be regularly traversing a family neighborhood,” Ellis wrote.

Opponents of the project turned out in force at a March 21 Development Board meeting. Many argued that the proposal goes against the spirit of an agreement crafted two years ago when St. Joseph’s sought approval to use the Hayes Lane residence. Ross said then that no residents of the treatment center would use the building.

“We never said there never would be any (outpatient) clients using the space during the day to meet with a staff person, but it was clearly then never our intention to move the outpatient clinic there at all,” he said Monday. “When we found out we needed to, our biggest priority was to make sure there was no interruption in access to services for our clients.”

After hearing both sides, the Development Board conditionally approved the amendment to the special use permit at the March 21 meeting, giving St. Joseph’s a year to use the Hayes Lane property for outpatient services. The vote was 4-1, with board member Dave Trudeau opposed.

“I think everybody heard the concerns and the frustration of the residents,” board Chairwoman Leslie Karasin said. “I felt the development code really didn’t give us the latitude to conclude that it was a use we could disapprove. Because the code looks at physical and external impacts, the kinds of community impacts that came up were somewhat outside of our ability to evaluate. They were largely speculative.

“We understood there was going to be an increase in traffic, but in my view the increase was going to be reasonably modest in the context of the use that road gets.”

Now, however, the board’s approval of the Hayes Lane site could be a moot issue. Ross will seek site plan approval from the board tonight for a proposal to move the outpatient clinic to a different temporary site: a vacant storefront in the building owned by Aubuchon Hardware on Broadway, across from Kinney Drugs.

“We’re looking to secure a lease on that in the the next few days,” Ross said. “We hope to get approval from (the state Office of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse Services) in the next few days, but we have to get village permission before either one of those is possible, which is what we’re hoping to get (tonight).”

If those approvals are granted, Ross said St. Joseph’s wouldn’t use the Hayes Lane site “and everybody will presumably will feel more comfortable about it: the clients, certainly us, and the members of the community.”

Ross said the Broadway site has plenty of parking and will be more accessible to clients than the location on Hayes Lane. It backs up to a residential neighborhood, but Ross noted there are homes nearby on Woodruff Street where the clinic has been located for more than 20 years “without any problems.”

Village Community Development Director Jeremy Evans said he thinks this is a better solution.

“It’s very centrally located,” Evans said. “It’s on a busy street. There’s a couple homes nearby but it’s largely a commercial area. From that perspective, it seems like a good fit.'”

Evans said a public hearing could be held but isn’t required for this proposal, under the new code, because it’s a site plan review application.

Tonight’s Development Board meeting takes place at 7 p.m. in the village offices on the second floor of the Harrietstown Town Hall.