Panel Looks at Alternative Sites for Nancy Reagan Center

The Nancy Reagan Drug Treatment Center could be housed at a Long Beach nursing home or an Antelope Valley rehabilitation center instead of at a Lake View Terrace hospital, according to northeast valley community members who met as a county-appointed panel for the first time Monday.

The 18-member panel was formed by Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich after area residents complained that politicians were ignoring their opposition to the drug treatment center. Panelists--who include religious leaders, political aides and homeowner representa-tives--said they plan to present more possible sites at a second meeting, Sept. 19.

Officials of Phoenix House, the agency proposing the center, also serve on the panel. They said they will try to keep an open mind about alternative locations, even though they already have negotiated a $7.7-million purchase option on the bankrupt Lake View Medical Center.

“If there’s another site that’s absolutely perfect, of course I’ll be willing to look at it. Why wouldn’t I?” said Larraine Mohr, an administrative vice president for Phoenix House’s West Coast operations.

However Lynne Cooper, president of the Lake View Terrace Improvement Assn., said she doubted Mohr’s sincerity.

“I get the total impression from them that they are not interested in looking at any other sites,” Cooper said after the meeting at the Pacoima Community Center. “But I would love to find a place that was so good they could not turn it down.”

When Phoenix House President Mitchell S. Rosenthal approached First Lady Nancy Reagan in 1987, he said she agreed to lend her name to a center that would be close to Bel-Air, where she and the President plan to retire next year. The First Lady will maintain an office at the center, Mohr said, and take part in “anything she wants to.”

Phoenix House first publicly acknowledged its interest in the Lake View Terrace hospital in April after entertainer and producer Merv Griffin announced that he would host a May fund-raiser with the First Lady as guest of honor. But Mohr has said she spent more than six months before that evaluating available buildings in Los Angeles County.

The hospital, which has three structures on about 14 acres, best fit the private, nonprofit company’s plans for a 150-bed adolescent treatment center, classrooms, a 60-bed adult treatment facility and offices for research, she said.

But residents of Lake View Terrace and, more recently, neighboring Pacoima have said existing drug problems in their community could be magnified by the treatment center’s location. In various community polls, they have voted overwhelmingly to keep the center out.

At Monday’s meeting, William Smith, another Phoenix House vice president, repeated the answer he has given at numerous public meetings this spring and summer: Drug trafficking has not been a problem at Phoenix House’s five other adolescent centers, two of which are in New York and three in California--in Venice, Santa Ana and rural San Diego County.

‘Different Mind-Set’

“It’s hard to get someone to believe, but it doesn’t happen,” Smith said. “There’s an entirely different mind-set, but no one wants to buy that.”

However, a spokesman for the Ministers Fellowship of the San Fernando Valley suggested that the spread of rock cocaine use into the northeast valley could make Phoenix House’s track record irrelevant.

“The location itself is in a drug-dealing area. There are rock houses all around that hospital,” Fred Taylor said. “Someone hooked on rock cocaine needs to be away from that environment.”

Tom Silver, Antonovich’s chief deputy, said Monday that some sites that might be available for purchase are Spectrum Care, a Long Beach nursing home; Glendora Community Hospital; the Santa Fe International complex in Alhambra and the Antelope Valley Rehabilitation Center. Silver said he also plans to sift through the estimated 500 county-owned properties to see if any are big enough.

Lewis Snow, president of the Lake View Terrace Home Owners Assn., suggested the Van Nuys Boulevard building that temporarily housed Olive View Medical Center while the new hospital was being built in Sylmar.

On May 31, Phoenix House went to federal bankruptcy court to gain the right to buy the Lake View Terrace Medical Center within 200 days. The company is paying a $200,000 deposit in allotments of $810 a day.

The 200-day option, which ends in mid-December, was an estimate of how long it would take to get a city permit to run a drug treatment center and school at the hospital site. Mohr said Monday that no permit application had been filed.

In past interviews, Mohr has said that Phoenix House may ask the federal bankruptcy court and the court-appointed trustee for an extension on the option. On Monday, she said she did not know whether the organization would need more time.