FIND COMPROMISE SITE FOR CLINIC

Kendric Speagle appears to be well within his rights to open a methadone
clinic at 12 W. Washington St. in downtown Champaign. The site is zoned
for central business. Uses permitted under that zoning designation
include, among other things, clinics and laboratories.

Speagle's clinic would be an outpatient treatment center for people
addicted to heroin and other opiates. The nearest methadone clinics are in
Decatur and Kankakee. There appears to be a need for such a facility,
although state and federal regulators will be the final judge of that.

But locally, the most pressing question is whether the north side of
downtown Champaign is the best site for a methadone clinic. This is a
neighborhood where, within two blocks of Speagle's proposed clinic, are:
The TIMES men's shelter; the Prairie Center for substance abuse; LW's
Place, another drug and alcohol counseling center; and the Champaign-Urbana
Public Health District clinic.

This is also a neighborhood where, just a few blocks south, people are
investing time and money in trying to rebuild Champaign's evolving downtown
and where, a few blocks west, citizens have undertaken a monumental effort
to reclaim the oldest residential neighborhood in the city.

Putting another social service agency into an area where crime already is
on the rise - very likely because of the concentration of social service
agencies - is another burden for those with hopes of maintaining a
neighborhood of beautiful but aging homes, or those helping to continue
downtown's rebirth.

Although the city government says it cannot prevent Speagle from locating
his clinic downtown, it can work with him to find a more appropriate site
in the city. It can find a location that is not amid an already dense
concentration of social service providers or across the street from a
children's museum or a few blocks away from an elementary school. By not
doing so, the city government adds to the obstacles faced by those who have
made substantial investments in a neighborhood that has been changing for
the better.