Candidate Favors Clinic Alternative

Senior citizens from Lake View Terrace joined with a Los Angeles City Council candidate Thursday to propose that a vacant hospital be turned into a community center instead of the Nancy Reagan Center for drug rehabilitation.

A permit for the drug treatment center was issued Wednesday by a city zoning administrator.

But Jules Bagneris, who is running against Councilman Ernani Bernardi in the 7th District, said the drug center would not solve the community’s drug problems because most patients would come from outside the area.

With about 40 senior citizens beside him, Bagneris, who also is president of the Lake View Terrace Home Owners Assn., said a senior citizens center, a youth center, a library, a day-care center and an emergency medical center would all be more appropriate for the residential neighborhood.

“I am prescribing more than a placebo and more than a cure for this community’s drug abuse problem,” Bagneris said. “I am prescribing preventive medicine.”

Bagneris asked the city of Los Angeles to consider buying the property--worth an estimated $7 million--through its powers of eminent domain. Phoenix House, the national nonprofit company behind the Nancy Reagan Center, holds an option to buy the property that expires in April.