SITE DESIGN CAN DETER CRIME, SAYS PLANNER

Foes Of Methadone Clinic Gain Support

Into the swirl of lawsuits surrounding plans to put a methadone clinic in
downtown Framingham comes Richard Gardiner, who says he is offering
opponents a potent weapon: logic.

An urban planner and designer specializing in environmental criminology,
Gardiner contacted a selectwoman after hearing about the town's lengthy
battle to keep Spectrum Health Systems from putting a methadone facility at
204 Howard St. Selectwoman Ginger Esty invited him to the latest gathering
of opponents on Wednesday, where he talked about the direct link between
how an area is designed and where crime occurs. Gardiner, whose Newburyport
firm, Richard A. Gardiner and Associates, conducted a study for the US
Justice Department on environmental criminology in the early 1970s, has
more recently examined the issue in places such as Lowell and Cambridge. In
both of those studies, Gardiner said, he found that methadone clinics,
which treat recovering heroin addicts, created new problems, such as drug
dealing, prostitution, and residential burglaries, in areas that otherwise
had reasonably low crime rates. "It's common-sense logic," he said in an
interview. "A methadone clinic is going to act as a generator of traffic of
ex-offenders, addicts if you locate the facility in the wrong location."
What is the right location?

According to Gardiner, methadone clinics should be in close proximity to
other social services, as well as police surveillance, and have a buffer
from residential neighborhoods. In general, the proposed site in Framingham
appears to meet these standards. Gardiner said he did not know enough
details to judge the situation, but said his studies might nonetheless be
applied to the situation in Framingham. Charles Faris, president and CEO of
Spectrum, could not be reached for comment. In a May 13 letter to Esty,
Gardiner said his research could help the town in its court actions against
Spectrum. Framingham is appealing a state Land Court decision last year
that ordered the town to issue Spectrum a building permit. Also pending is
a $1.5 million lawsuit Spectrum filed against Framingham, accusing town
officials of discriminating against drug addicts, who are considered a
protected handicapped population under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Confronting the possibility of a financially ruinous judgment, the Board of
Selectmen has instructed the town counsel to explore a settlement with
Spectrum, and negotiations have been ongoing for the past month. Meanwhile,
a groundswell of opposition has been mounting, with state representatives,
the downtown manager, and Town Meeting members writing letters to state and
town officials against the proposed facility.

Spectrum has already invested more than $150,000 to renovate this site.
Critics insist that putting the clinic in the heart of downtown would have
a deleterious effect on the area, especially on Framingham's revitalization
attempts. "As it is, we have an uphill battle in our revitalization efforts
given the proliferation of existing social services, economic woes, and
infrastructure problems that presently plague this area," downtown manager
Beth Bannon wrote in an April 1 letter to the Board of Selectmen. "Downtown
is also the home of fragile seniors and persons with disabilities whose
lives would be more compromised with the presence of the methadone clinic."
Since development along Route 9 began taking away businesses from downtown
in the 1960s, Framingham has struggled to maintain a vibrant town center.

Only within the past five years have revitalization efforts started to move
forward, with the creation of Downtown Solutions and the hiring of a
downtown manager. "We can't go back to the 1980s with vacant stores,
boarded-up buildings and blighted areas," said Larry Schmeidler, a leader
of FIMBY, or Framingham is My Back Yard, an umbrella group of civic
organizations. "Framingham's well-being depends on the health of its
downtown, not the wealth of a drug dispenser." Spectrum operated methadone
clinics at three different locations on Waverly Street and Union Avenue
between 1989 and 1995. The company faced considerable community opposition
when it tried to move sites in 1996, a dispute that ended up in the courts.

Spectrum and the Board of Health - one of the only town bodies that
supports the downtown clinic - have said the company is a good neighbor,
and was invisible when it operated during the 1990s.

But Gardiner said support, or opposition, isn't the point. "It's not really
an issue of being against those facilities; it's being for trying to find
the best location for them," Gardiner said.