DRUG CENTER'S FUTURE IN JEOPARDY

Meriden - The future of one of the state's few long-term drug rehabilitation
centers - considered one of the best in the nation - may be in jeapardy now
that its plan to move to Meriden has been scrapped.

"It's too bad, because I think it's a great program," developer James
McGrire said of the Addiction Prevention Treatment Foundation. McGrire had
planned to lease part of his downtown building, the former Veterans Memorial
Medical Center, to the private nonprofit agency.

"Lots of people think it's a great program - and nobody wants it in their
backyard."

McGuire decided to abandon his agreement with APT last week after he learned
that dozens of city residents were mobilizing to protest the move.

The news leaves officials at the publicly funded nonprofit with no backup
plan and a fast-approaching deadline to move out of their current home at a
state-owned site in Newtown.

State officials say the former Fairfield Hills Hospital campus, where APT is
now based, will be sold to a private entity by the end of the summer. By
the end of the year - perhaps sooner - APT is expected to have found a new home.

APT had hoped to move into McGuire's Meriden building with few worries. It
would have been centrally located to serve the hundred or so clients the
agency treats from across the state. And because the building was once a
hospital, it would need few renovations.

McGuire's news "shocked" APT, said its director, Alan Brown.

"I don't know where we're going to go. We're not close to a second option."

It's not that APT is new to the not-in-my-backyard syndrome. Before the
organization moved to Fairfield Hills 15 years ago, it had faced
neighborhood opposition when it tried to move to Seymour, West Haven and
?Shelton.

This time is worse, though, because time is running out for the
organization, which has one ot the highest success rates in the country for
getting patients off substance abuse.

Though APT officials have no other deals in the works, Brown said, they do
have a list of other possible sites in the state. Brown declined to discuss
the other sites, but said at least one is in another section of Meriden.

McGuire scoffed at the suggestion that another Meriden location would get
public or political support.

"They'll never get in this city," he said, recalling the anger that met his
paln. "I'm telling you, it's never happen."