Foes Regroup in New Battle to Keep Out Drug Center : Lake View Terrace: News that Phoenix House wants to buy a bankrupt hospital stuns neighbors, who thought they won the fight three years ago.

Late last week, news that a residential drug treatment center was trying to buy a bankrupt hospital in her neighborhood sent Eileen Barry digging in her file cabinets.

The proposal for the center and most of the players were familiar, but what caught Barry and her Lake View Terrace neighbors by surprise was the return of an idea they thought they had buried three years ago, when former First Lady Nancy Reagan withdrew her support.

“My heart just sunk when I heard it was back,” Barry said.

For nearly a year beginning in the spring of 1988, two local homeowner groups fought the Nancy Reagan Center, organizing demonstrations, attending contentious community meetings and speaking out at city zoning hearings.

Now that the Reagan-less Phoenix House has again set its sights on the 14-acre Lake View Medical Center property for a 150-bed drug treatment center for adolescents, the opponents are sifting through the research and tactics that they believe did the trick the last time around.

“We’ve done this before,” said resident Bob Furginson during an opposition strategy meeting Wednesday night. “We succeeded, but apparently we only succeeded in putting them off for a while.”

Phoenix House announced earlier this week that it is negotiating a deal to buy the hospital, which went bankrupt in 1986 and has been used only as a film location in recent years. Phoenix House is seeking the hospital again largely because the recession had helped bring the price tag down from more than $7 million to about $3.2 million.

At the strategy meeting attended by 26 residents, one woman asked if the group should try to persuade actor and Lake View Terrace ranch owner Patrick Swayze to join them. No, others responded; he never was involved before. Should they stage a protest march at the hospital site? Yes, that drew television cameras three years ago. What happened to all the picket signs? They were recycled.

Picket signs were not the only things lost.

One of the key neighborhood opposition leaders and an intrepid researcher, Lynne Cooper, has moved away. Some of those who were relative newcomers to the area in 1989 are taking her place, however, saying that in the years since the last fight they have become more rooted in the community, more protective of their neighborhood and better organized.

“It’ll be easier this time because we’re angrier,” said Rose Miller, who has lived a block away from the hospital for six years. “We thought it was done, buried, not that someone would try to sneak in the back door.”

Buried with the issue, deep in the homeowners’ files, were the tools of protest.

There are statistics to be updated. For instance, Barry reported at the meeting this week, Phoenix House says its success rate is more than 60%. Cooper had earlier found some indications that it may be more like 7% and that needs to be pursued, Barry said.

There are speeches to be retooled. The new spokeswoman, Joycelyn Furginson, said she was “in awe” when she read the speech Cooper gave before the city zoning administrator.

“It was very logical, not real emotional,” she said. “I’ll be able to use a lot of it.”

There are new neighbors to be educated and old neighbors to be reinvigorated. People living near some of the other 14 Phoenix House facilities across the nation, some of whom opposed those centers, should be re-contacted to see if any problems have arisen, Furginson said.

Phoenix House is dancing a similar waltz with history. The press officer is retrieving old newspaper clips. The new project coordinator, Steven Taylor, is shuffling through responses to some of the familiar community concerns.

“This is deja vu, “ said company President Mitchell S. Rosenthal.

Taylor said he is actually hoping not to have to embark on the old battle plans, but instead to resume communications with the neighborhood where they left off. Just days before Reagan withdrew, Taylor said, some Lake View Terrace residents had called Phoenix House, offering to discuss compromises.

“Maybe I’m sounding overly optimistic, but I’ve got to start that way,” he said.

Rosenthal said he hopes the center’s smaller scale will make it more palatable to the community. This time, it is a center for 150 adolescent drug abusers, ages 13 to 17, and administrative offices for the four other Phoenix Houses in California. Last time, it also was to include a 60-person adult treatment program and a research facility, where Reagan was to have an office.

Opponents, however, dismissed any suggestion of conciliation, saying any compromise offers were a part of the earlier era, when they feared the deck was stacked against them because of Reagan’s connections and the city zoning board’s favorable response to the project.

Now that Phoenix House has to start over, beginning with a June 4 bankruptcy court hearing on whether to accept the $3.2-million bid for the hospital property and continuing through city zoning hearings, they too plan to begin again, with renewed determination.

“I don’t know why they’re so persistent,” said an exasperated Elaine Benjamin, who has lived near the hospital for seven years. “If we’d known they would be persistent, we would’ve kept up our demonstrations so they would stay away.”