DRUG-AID CENTER REVIVED

Group To Seek Pontiac's OK For Women's Facility

A plan to treat drug-addicted women in a building near Pontiac's downtown is
being revived.

The Grace Centers of Hope -- armed with a federally brokered agreement with
the city reached in the wake of a series of clashes last year -- will again
ask the city Planning Commission this month to approve a variance for up to
50 mothers and their children to live in the former church building at
Woodward and Perry. Grace Centers bought the building in 1997.

The city and Oakland County also are working with Grace Centers -- formerly
the Pontiac Rescue Mission -- to find a new home on the outskirts of the
city for its operations, including an existing 150-bed shelter that has
drawn complaints from city officials and merchants.

Business owners have criticized the shelter's location downtown, claiming
that its residents loiter during the day, intimidate customers and commit
petty crimes.

Kent Clark, chief executive officer of Grace Centers, said he wants to move
both the shelter and the proposed women's center elsewhere.

"There is one particular piece of property we are looking at that's 5 1/2
acres and has three buildings. We want a campus effect, and we want to be
out of the business district," Clark said Tuesday.

But until new land is secured, Grace Centers will seek "emergency" approval
for the women's center, where they would be housed with their children,
Clark said.

"We have turned away 1,000 moms and kids since Jan. 1," he said. "We will
approach the city again now, and hopefully have a hearing within 30 or 60
days."

The center -- rejected three times by the city in 2000 -- was the touchstone
for confrontations between then-Mayor Walter Moore and Clark in 2001. Their
arguing culminated in a controversial predawn police raid and the arrest of
more than 30 Grace Centers residents on outstanding misdemeanor warrants.

Days later, the city carried out a surprise building code inspection at the
facility.

Mayoral candidate Willie Payne seized on Moore's handling of the matter as a
campaign issue, promising to work with Clark. Payne narrowly defeated Moore.

Clark said he's counting on Payne's more cooperative approach, and an
agreement in which the city promises not to discriminate against the
homeless and to help gain approval for the center.

That agreement is expected to be approved by federal bureaucrats this month.
It was approved in May by city leaders, settling a discrimination complaint
filed with the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development by Grace
Centers after last year's controversies.

The city does not admit wrongdoing, but pledges to deal fairly with Grace
Centers. Turning down the women and children's center again would likely be
a violation of that agreement, warned Gary Anderson, an attorney for Grace
Centers.

"If there's a denial, there's a strong case that it's a violation," he said
Tuesday.