Controversial Drug-Abuse Treatment Center OKd : Lake View Terrace: The L.A. City Council vote clears the way for Phoenix House to open a facility for teen-agers.

Culminating five years of intense debate, the Los Angeles City Council voted Wednesday to approve plans for a drug-abuse treatment center in Lake View Terrace, despite adamant opposition from some neighbors.

The 11-3 City Council vote clears the way for Phoenix House to open a 150-bed facility for teen-age drug users on the site of an abandoned hospital.

In approving the plans, the council turned down a final appeal by neighbors who asked that an 8-foot-fence be erected around the facility and that it be patrolled by uniformed security guards 24 hours a day.

“The kids will be good citizens and will not be on the street robbing you,” Councilman Hal Bernson assured several dozen neighbors who attended the meeting.

Instead, the council approved a regulation requiring that the surrounding fence be 5.5 feet high and that a non-uniformed employee be on duty at the front gate at all times.

The Phoenix House will be a private residential high school for youths aged 13 to 17 who have no history of violence. The program is voluntary and the youths are referred by probation officers, police or parents.

The three council “no” votes came from Nate Holden, Joel Wachs and Ernani Bernardi, whose district includes Lake View Terrace. They said they would support the project in another location or with tougher security measures.

Once adamantly opposed by nearly all Lake View Terrace neighbors, the project has in the past year won over some supporters and now the neighborhood is split into warring factions, who on Wednesday accused each other of distorting the neighborhood’s position.

Some residents said they fear the center will lower property values and allow teen-agers to wander into adjacent neighborhoods where they can commit crimes. If the council was going to approve it at all, it should at least have required an 8-foot fence around the project, they said.

“We have asked for pro-active measures to protect our community,” said Sandy Hubbard, co-president of the Lake View Terrace Improvement Assn., which opposes the project.

Councilman-elect Richard Alarcon, who replaces Bernardi next week to represent the 7th District, asked the council to adopt the extra security measures requested by the neighbors in order to reach a compromise.

“The question is: What can you do today to promote community consensus?” he said.

But others said there is no reason to fear the center.

Joycelyn Furginson, whose home abuts the center site, said she once opposed the project but after studying other Phoenix House centers around the country has decided to support the project.

“I am not scared or intimidated by the presence of Phoenix House,” she said.

Phoenix House administrators said they want to create a therapeutic atmosphere for their clients and that the extra security measures requested by neighbors would interfere with that.

Shantelle Moses, a teen-age resident of the Phoenix House center in Santa Ana, told the council that she was once a prostitute and drug user. But last week, she said, she graduated as valedictorian of her high school.

Moses said she was angry to see posters in the Lake View Terrace neighborhood that compared locating the rehabilitation center in the area to putting a toxic waste dump there.

“We are here to tell you that we are not toxic waste,” she said. “We are human beings like everyone else.”

Actor Roy Scheider said he has lived a block away from a Phoenix House center in New York for three years with no problems.

“Never ever in the time that I lived there did I perceive Phoenix House as a threat to the neighborhood,” he said.

Phoenix House originally applied for a permit in 1988 but dropped the request when former First Lady Nancy Reagan, a fund-raising supporter, withdrew her backing because of widespread neighborhood opposition.

Phoenix House renewed its request last year and purchased the 13-acre property for $3.2 million last year after the hospital that owned it went bankrupt.