By Karen Wells
The Examiner’s recent investigation into the Hudson Ridge Wellness Middle (“Massive {Dollars}, Excessive Stakes Embroil Cortlandt Rehab Proposal,” Sept. 7-13, Northern Westchester Examiner) covers a large breadth of neighborhood issues, from visitors to the setting to the developer’s background. These are vital points which the city should take into account, however we should additionally take into account whether or not this facility will actually serve our neighborhood.
After I and fellow Cortlandt residents elevate pink flag after pink flag concerning the Hudson Ridge Wellness Middle, it’s as a result of our neighborhood and our neighbors deserve community-focused dependancy remedy and help. Many people involved about this proposal have firsthand expertise with dependancy and the methods of the rampant cash-centric remedy business. These experiences have made us devoted advocates for high-quality community-based care that gives efficient, long-term remedy and is out there to all – not simply the 1 p.c.
Our issues about Hudson Ridge Wellness are primarily based on this elementary need for dignified and accessible look after our neighborhood, and we consider the City of Cortlandt ought to NOT bend its established guidelines for a facility that won’t ship that dignified, efficient and accessible look after our neighborhood members.
At its proposed location, the Hudson Ridge Wellness Middle can’t be constructed as-of-right. In actual fact, it could require the city to blatantly disregard native zoning regulation altogether. The developer has utilized for a particular allow that will enable a neighborhood hospital in a residential space, and the regulation requires the power to be on a state highway so emergency automobiles can have rapid, quick access. As deliberate, this facility is not going to be a neighborhood hospital and Quaker Ridge Street is actually not a state highway; it’s a small, winding residential avenue.
Briefly, the developer is asking the Zoning Board of Appeals to waive well-established guidelines to permit a for-profit mission. All of this regardless of the mission’s give attention to serving rich non-residents, intensive impacts on a residential space and an unrealistic mission plan that can’t ship the kind of dignified setting these courageous sufficient to hunt remedy deserve.
If a dependable owner-operator needs to construct an appropriately sized facility that can actually serve the area people and supply the correct residing setting whereas minimizing neighborhood impacts on necessities like water and entry to emergency companies, then and solely then is it applicable to debate permitting the neighborhood hospital exemption for use.
If the developer doesn’t need to take this strategy however would relatively construct a big for-profit enterprise meant to serve rich out-of-towners, different choices exist. For instance, there’s a 31-acre parcel solely six minutes away from the proposed web site that qualifies as-of-right. In different phrases, this developer wouldn’t need to ask the city to bend the principles.
Not like the proposed Hudson Ridge Wellness location, this different web site has municipal water and sewer connections, dependable entry for emergency automobiles and connections to public transportation. I’m not suggesting that is the place the mission ought to be constructed, however I’m highlighting it so everybody can perceive there are as-of-right alternate options that the developer has actively determined to not pursue.
For the reason that Hudson Ridge Wellness Middle was first proposed six years in the past, neighbors have had a singular purpose: primary transparency in order that if a facility is constructed, we could be assured it is going to be achieved in a way that minimizes impacts and gives accessible and efficient look after neighborhood members in a dignified residing setting. But, now we have been stonewalled each step of the way in which and falsely attacked by the developer’s legal professional as being towards dependancy remedy.
Due to The Examiner’s reporting, we now have extra data and we hope to make progress in resolving this matter.
The city has a easy selection: bend native zoning legal guidelines which were in place for years to take a raffle on a for-profit enterprise and let this non-community-focused facility be inbuilt a residential neighborhood or comply with the legal guidelines on the books and deny their software until it’s modified to ship what the legal guidelines require. The proper resolution is apparent.
Karen Wells is a Croton-on-Hudson resident and an opponent of the Hudson Ridge Wellness Middle proposal.
