RECOVERY CENTER WOULD BE LARGEST IN U.S.

Proposal Would Put 800 Ex-Con Addicts In Former Hospital Near Children's Museum

Investors are working to build support for opening the country's
largest residential treatment center for drug and alcohol addiction
in the former Winona Memorial Hospital building.

Based on a successful model program called The Healing Place that has
been used nationwide, the program would provide treatment, support
and education for its residents.

Some community representatives this week visited Louisville, Ky., to
observe the original institution, which claims a recovery rate five
times the national average.

The proposal would place more than 800 ex-convicts in a for-profit
program near The Children's Museum and several schools, at the site
of the hospital, which has been closed for 18 months.

Mayor Bart Peterson said he is aware of the proposal but would
support it only if neighborhood interest groups do.

"These kinds of facilities are needed," Peterson said. "The question
is where they should be located."

The program's backers stressed they are exploring the concept at this
stage. They hope to gain the support of neighborhood groups and
institutions and to win contracts with the Indiana Department of
Correction and other sources of potential clients before moving into
the final stages of planning.

The driving force behind the concept is James Gaither, an addiction
doctor who works with several hospitals. He began working on the idea
nearly three years ago, and he said his goal is to have the program
running by the end of this year.

So far, neighbors remain skeptical.

The area immediately around the Winona site, at 3232 N. Meridian St.,
draws thousands of children every day. The Children's Museum property
stretches for blocks to the south, St. Richard's School and Trinity
Episcopal Church are across the street, and Shortridge Middle School
and Indianapolis Public School 60 are within two blocks.

"The Children's Museum has invested significant resources toward the
ongoing enhancement and improvement of the neighborhood in which we
reside," Jeffrey Patchen, president and CEO of the museum, said in an
e-mail. "We are extremely concerned about any entity which could
jeopardize the safety of our neighbor residents and museum members
and visitors, or potentially diminish that investment."

Steve Harrison, the headmaster of St. Richard's, a private school
where tuition tops $11,000 a year, expressed the same concerns. He
said school leaders would try to keep an open mind and learn more
about the program before taking a position, but he worried that
students' families would not view it positively.

Long Stay

The plan calls for residents to undergo a 12- to 18-month stay for
substance abuse programs that would treat men and women separately as
they come out of state prisons, county jails or other forms of
incarceration. It would employ the spiritual approach of 12-step
programs like Alcoholics Anonymous.

"There's a lot of money being wasted now by locking up people with
untreated chemical dependency," said Gaither, who joined the field
after his own recovery. "There's a need for this kind of proven
program," and he figures the Winona location is ideal.

"We believe it would help the neighborhood" by placing a
"community-sensitive" program in a building that has been empty
nearly two years, Gaither said.

Gus Miller, a real estate broker for NAI Olympia Partners and the man
trying to arrange the sale of the Winona site, has organized meetings
with neighborhood groups to win their acceptance of the proposal.

The Healing Place in Louisville has been so successful that it has
been replicated in Lexington, Ky., Raleigh, N.C., and Richmond, Va.
Program literature says it costs less than $25 per day per person,
compared with up to $200 per day in some treatment facilities. The
money would come from taxpayers through public agencies that place
people leaving the prison system.

The volunteer program would not be a lockdown facility, but Gaither
said it would have its own security setup.

Department of Correction officials said they have made no commitment
to the facility, and they already have a transition facility in Plainfield.

And the center could be too big for the demand, said Ronald
Hunsicker, president of the National Association of Addiction
Treatment Providers. The market may not support what he said would be
the largest residential facility in the country, especially when the
city already has a private facility, Fairbanks, on the Northeastside.

Gaither and Miller recognize the challenge of persuading neighbors.
They hope to find more people like Rod Haywood, an Indiana University
professor whose son attends St. Richard's.

"A place that helps people better their lives fits in with the
mission of St. Richard's and Trinity Church, as I see it," Haywood
said. "I would feel great about the idea."

More typical is the negative reaction of the neighborhood associations.

Stephen Towns, a board member of the Historic Meridian Park
association, said his neighbors are unhappy. A mental health center
and a halfway house already are nearby, and he said another facility
would diminish property values in the resurging area.

"We think we have done our share," Towns said, "and it needs to go
somewhere else."