After Month, Panel Finds No Alternative Site for Drug Center

A citizens panel appointed by a Los Angeles County supervisor came up empty-handed in its first month of searching for an alternative site for the Nancy Reagan Center for drug abuse treatment.

But panel members vowed Monday to approach the challenge with renewed vigor, bolstered by the knowledge that the operator of the proposed center has not yet filed for a conditional use permit to locate it in the bankrupt Lake View Medical Center.

“The more time they take, the more confident I feel,” said Lewis Snow, panelist and president of the Lake View Terrace Home Owners Assn. “If we can provide them alternatives, then the ball’s in their court. . . . It makes them the heavy.”

The association opposes the Lake View Terrace site because they say it is too close to houses and drug-dealing areas.

Purchase Option

Phoenix House, a nonprofit corporation based in New York that will operate the center, is paying $810 a day toward a $200,000, 200-day purchase option on the hospital. The option runs out in late December or early January, although Phoenix House representatives have hinted that they might ask the federal bankruptcy court for an extension to give them time to obtain the conditional use permit.

The special permit is needed because the land is zoned for agriculture and the hospital’s permit has expired.

Larraine Mohr, a Phoenix House vice president, said the corporation has held off filing an application for the permit until several problems--including community opposition--can be ironed out.

“It doesn’t pay to go full-steam when you’re really not ready,” Mohr said after Monday’s meeting.

Snow and other panelists said they had hoped Los Angeles County would unearth some county-owned property suitable for the facility, which will include a 150-student boarding school and a 60-person adult treatment facility and research center.

Tom Silver, an aide to Supervisor Mike Antonovich, who formed the panel, reported that two searches of county files had turned up nothing viable.

Search Redirected

Although panelists questioned whether all county buildings are being fully utilized, they agreed to reorient their search toward public and private schools, vacant hospitals and convalescent homes and vacant land.

Mohr said she already knows that some of those alternatives will not work. Most older buildings do not meet earthquake standards, she said, and strict state Department of Social Services licensing criteria require buildings with many smaller rooms, where adolescents can be housed two to a room.

Mohr was as adamant at Monday’s meeting as she was at one held in August that Phoenix House does not intend to build a facility from scratch. She also turned down a suggestion that mobile classrooms and housing could be used during the three years she said it would take to build a permanent building.

The First Lady agreed to lend her name to the center when approached by Phoenix House President Mitchell S. Rosenthal. Mohr said Mrs. Reagan will have an office at the facility and will be involved in its administration.