DELANCEY STREET ON ROCKS AT OCEAN IMPERIAL BEACH FURIOUS OVER REHAB CENTER
PLANS

In her 15 years living in the sand-swept San Diego County town of Imperial
Beach, Cheryl Schaumburg said she can't recall a time when her neighbors
have been so riled up.

A few weeks ago, news spread through town that San Francisco-based Delancey
Street Foundation wants to open a 30-unit residential rehabilitation center
on a parcel across the street from the beach.

The ensuing battle over its fate has opened old wounds for residents and
city officials of this blue-collar town of 28,000.

For decades, Imperial Beach has been known best as a haven for biker bars
and for having its shores bombarded with sewage from nearby Mexico. It was
only in 1998 that the Mexican and U.S. governments finally got the sewage
cleaned up and the city was able to reopen its beaches.

Now families are free to frolic in the sand and splash in the surf. The
city also has lured several condominium developers and is trying to woo a
mid-sized hotel and several restaurants.

Considered one of the nation's leading self-help rehabilitation and
training programs, Delancey Street has graduated thousands of former
substance abusers and ex-convicts from its programs since its founding in
San Francisco in 1971.

"I'm not an opponent of Delancey Street," said Schaumburg, a local real
estate agent, who joined 150 Imperial Beach residents recently at a
standing-room-only city council meeting to voice their objections to the
project. "This is a land-use issue. It's not something that belongs in the
middle of our tourist district and its $500,000 and million-dollar condos."

Imperial Beach Mayor Diane Rose said she appreciates Delancey Street's
noble mission, but insists it has no place on the city's beachfront. The
parcel is in the seacoast commercial zone, which is set aside for tourist uses.

City officials said that they're willing to go to court to uphold their
zoning law.

"We're talking about a small commercial area that is nine blocks long,"
said Rose, who was elected to the council in 1992. "Do we take a block of
that away, and have it owned by a nonprofit? I don't think so."

She also said that kind of development would hurt the cash-strapped city's
efforts to improve its tax base. The city wants a tax-producing business on
the parcel to help offset a budget deficit of $150,000. Its median
household income in 1997 was $30,505.

"Imperial Beach is a small town," said Michelle Goldfarb, co-owner of the
Sand Castle Inn on Seacoast Drive and a former San Francisco resident.
"Where they want to put Delancey is our tourist mecca, our Fisherman's
Wharf . . . currently under construction. It's just not the right location.
San Francisco is a big city. For us to absorb a project like that would
overwhelm us."

Mimi Silbert, director of the nonprofit Delancey Street Foundation, said
she is familiar with the objections to rehabilitation programs locating
near homes, but was taken aback by the intensity of the opposition in
Imperial Beach.

She's spent decades trying to refashion society's image of the addict and
ex-convict.

"I've heard over and over again from Imperial Beach that perception is
reality," said Silbert, 58, who in 1971 founded Delancey Street with her
former partner, the late John Maher, who for years battled addiction off
and on. The organization now has a $20 million budget and five centers
across the country.

"I've tried to explain that I understand their fears over having ex-
convicts and drug addicts in their neighborhood, but we have a 30-year
solid track record," said Silbert, who sat at a table in the Delancey
Street restaurant on San Francisco's Embarcadero and displayed a letter of
support for the Imperial Beach project from Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.

As Silbert spoke, the restaurant's waiters -- many are former junkies,
prostitutes or gang members -- got ready for the dinner crowd, making sure
tables were just so. Chefs put finishing touches on the specials of the day.

"We've never had an arrest," added Silbert, "Our people don't drink, they
don't do drugs. We'd be an asset to the community of Imperial Beach."

The complex in San Francisco is surrounded by million-dollar condominiums
and upscale apartments along The Embarcadero. Residents live rent-free in
177 immaculate units, earning their keep working for Delancey Street's
restaurant, cafe, print and automotive shops, video store, moving company
and Christmas tree lots.

Silbert said any new project will include tax-generating components such as
a restaurant, cafe or bookstore. She also said she has offered to pay a
"small tax" to the city of Imperial Beach.

"I don't want to see the city go down," she said. "We help cities, we clean
graffiti, sidewalks. We're into being good neighbors."

Since its founding in San Francisco, the Delancey Street Foundation has
opened projects in New Mexico, New York, North Carolina and Los Angeles.

The centers operate on an "each one, teach one" philosophy where
longer-term residents help newcomers overcome addictions and criminal
behavior through working in the center's various enterprises. The average
stay is four years.

In 1993, then-President Bill Clinton asked Silbert to allow his
administration to use Delancey Street as an example for national
rehabilitation programs.

"We're used to being loved at this stage of the game," Silbert said.

She addded that she didn't pick the Imperial Beach property. It was handed
to her by a San Diego County Superior Court judge who is a fan of the
Delancey Street program. She had merely expressed a desire for beachfront
property, after the judge hounded her for years to open a satellite branch
in San Diego County.

Silbert said she has no definite plans for the Imperial Beach site, though
it will have some mix of housing and commercial development, perhaps a cafe
or bed and breakfast. She said the property is already in escrow and if the
deal falls through she will lose "a considerable sum of money."

But Bonnie Neff of Imperial Beach won't be swayed.

"I'm opposed to having convicted felons on our beach, next to our children,
" said Neff, president of the Imperial Beach Club residents' organization,
who frequently visits the beach so that her granddaughter can play in the
sand. "We've had enough problems through the years."

There was a time when Delancey Street wasn't accepted -- even in San Francisco.

In the early 1970s, while trying to set up in the city's tony Pacific
Heights district, someone threw a rock through one of the foundation's
office windows.

Resident Noel Kirshenbaum -- one of the neighbors who objected to the
center being in Pacific Heights -- said it was not uncommon to be bombarded
by "screaming," which he assumed was from therapy sessions, at all hours of
the night.

Neighbors complained to police several times about the foundation's moving
trucks blocking traffic. Over time, Delancey -- named after a street on New
York's Lower East Side -- moved a few blocks away to Broadway and
Divisadero. Neighborhood complaints quieted, Kirshenbaum said.

"We were unhappy that they were not up-front with the neighborhood about
what they were doing," Kirshenbaum said. "It was kind of a subterfuge. Over
time, I think they found other places, they got a little further away from
us and they became less obnoxious."

Silbert acknowledges that the group might have been a "little sloppy" in
their first few months in Pacific Heights. "But that was 30 years ago," she
said, and the organization has improved.

Christine Pelosi, a former Pacific Heights resident who has fond memories
of her time as a volunteer with Delancey Street, said she'd be willing to
talk to any Imperial Beach resident to try to assuage their concerns.

"I always looked up to them as role models, as people who were turning
their lives around," said Pelosi, daughter of Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-San
Francisco, and a former assistant San Francisco district attorney. "San
Francisco's symbol is the phoenix rising from the ashes. I think that's for
Delancey Street. There was never any violence or alcohol or drug abuse,
which is more than most people in Pacific Heights have in their own homes."

Delancey Street is also fighting battles on other fronts. The foundation
will go to court next week in Greensboro, N.C., to defend its right to
expand a group home in a residential neighborhood from 30 to 60 residents,
which city officials said clashes with zoning laws.

San Diego Superior Court Judge Norbert Ehrenfreund, said he found the
Imperial Beach parcel for Silbert after years of tireless searching.

The building is now home to a sober living community.

"It has let the communities in which it exists know that treatment works,"
he said. "It will be a plus for Imperial Beach."

Mike Karasik, who owns the Bayside Village Apartments, said he can attest
to the fact that Delancey Street has been a good neighbor.

"We have been down there for about 12 years, side by side," Karasik said.
"Folks at Delancey never have caused one problem. If anything, they helped
us to legitimize and solidify that neighborhood. The retail services they
brought were sorely lacking."

But Schaumburg said she and other Imperial Beach residents will fight to
keep Delancey Street off their beachfront.

"It's taken 25 years to beat the bad rap our city has had," Schaumburg said,

noting that visitors have come from as far as the United Kingdom and
Russia, as well as from all over California. "People are finally
discovering Imperial Beach.

"This has become a beautiful, laid-back city. We'll fight to the end to
keep it that way."

Silbert said she remains optimistic about Delancey Street's prospects in
Imperial Beach.

"I always see resolution," she said. "That's who I am."