‘The fight is not over,’ Newhallville-Hamden neighbors say about effort to keep APT methadone clinic out Mark Zaretsky May 21, 2022 Updated: May 21, 2022 8:23 p.m.
‘The fight is not over,’ Newhallville-Hamden neighbors say about effort to keep APT methadone clinic out
NEW HAVEN — Members of the Newhallville-Hamden Strong community group fighting to keep the APT Foundation from locating a methadone clinic in the former Achievement First Elm City College Preparatory school at 794 Dixwell Ave. offered a simple, two-part message Saturday — along with some prayers.
The fight is not over, even though the state has approved $2 million to help another group buy the property at Dixwell Avenue and Elizabeth Street for a trauma-informed community wellness and education center focused on youth and families.
Speaker after speaker hammered the message home Saturday during a news conference and prayer hour that featured the words of clergy and political leaders from both New Haven and Hamden, including New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker, Alder Devin Avshalom-Smith, D-20, Hamden Legislative Council member Abdul Osmanu, D-3, state Sen. Gary Winfield, D-New Haven, and state Rep. Robyn Porter, D-New Haven, among others.
More than 50 people attended — including brothers Jayden Bolden, 10, and Eli Bolden, 9, and their cousin Kauren Gaines, 10, who sang a rendition of “When The Saints Go Marching In” that brought applause from others in the crowd.
What the APT Foundation wants to create “is something that’s needed,” but “it’s not something that’s needed right here in this neighborhood,” said the Rev. Oliver Archer, pastor of the Mount Zion Seventh Day Adventist Church in Hamden.
“There have been people in my church praying — and they’ve been praying that this ... will go away,” said Archer, one of several Christian and Muslim clergy to speak. “I believe that God is here today.”
Imam Saladin Hasan of the Abdul-Majid Karim Hasan Islamic Center just over the border in Hamden, who likened putting a methadone clinic in the middle of an inner city neighborhood to a form of domestic terrorism, wanted to know if anyone from the city of New Haven had approached the APT Foundation “and tried to assist them in finding another location.”
Elicker said they had.
APT Foundation CEO Lynn Madden was not immediately available to respond.
Madden said after a neighborhood Zoom meeting in January that she wasn’t surprised by the “community apprehension,” which she said often is the case when the foundation proposes a new facility.
“It’s clear to me that I could have done more to reach the community,” she said. “This by no means was intended to be a secret process but was a process through which we could purchase enough space” for APT Foundation to move all of the existing programs from its rented headquarters at 1 Long Wharf Drive in New Haven.
Other clergy who spoke at Saturday’s event included Elder Larry Johnson and Elder Deborah Conyers from Grace Chapel, located directly across Dixwell from the proposed site.
Jeanette Sykes, chairwoman of the Newhallville-Hamden Strong steering committee, said it’s important for people to know despite the State Bonding Commission’s approval of $2 million to help the partnership between the Rev. Boise Kimber and Clifford W. Beers Guidance Clinic group buy the property from the APT Foundation that “it is not over.
“We’re still at the table,” Sykes said. “We’re are not celebrating ... We still need their help.”
The neighborhood group has met twice with Elicker, who attended Saturday’s event, and will meet with him again next week, Sykes said. It recently bought a billboard on Dixwell Avenue and “we are going to be prepared.
“We’re hoping (APT’s) word is their bond,” she said, referring to the APT Foundation’s pledge not to file any applications or move forward with the move for a least three months while they are talking. “But we will be prepared either way.”
The group has won support from 11 of the city’s 12 community management teams so far and will be on the agenda for the 12th — the Quinnipiac East Community Management Team — soon, Sykes said.
“We are in solidarity,” said Kim Harris, co-president of the Newhallville Community Management Team. “This (battle) is going to have a huge impact on who we are and where we live ... There’s been a unification in Newhallville that is here to stay.”
Elicker said everyone involved is “pro-treatment,” but “these kinds of sites” in the middle of residential neighborhoods “are not the best for people seeking treatment” because, as with the APT Foundation’s Congress Avenue site in the Hill, “other people set up outside and try to take advantage of them.”
City officials “have been in productive conversations with the leaders of APT” and “the spirit of the conversations is, they really want to work with us.” He said he did not think the APT Foundation will seek to surprise anyone by filing applications while discussions are continuing.
But “you will keep the pressure on,” he said. “I know you will.”
The crowd got a bit of a scare when one man attending fell back and collapsed in the heat while Elicker was speaking. After a few minutes of worry — during which Elicker, a trained EMT, was among the people attending to the man — the fire department and American Medical Response arrived to monitor him and make sure he was OK.
Winfield said, “My hope for this is” that “it is just the beginning ... What people know right now is that” when APT came to Newhallville, people stood up for themselves, he said. “This community must be respected.”
Osmanu that what’s proved to be important is the teamwork that people on both side of the town and city line have displayed. He cautioned anyone looking to located a facility in the neighborhood that “if you’re not contacting me or the people in my community, that’s an automatic no.”
Avshalom-Smith said Clifford Beers “has offered to purchase this building an bring in a trauma-inspired” community wellness and education center focused on youth and families and “we have an opportunity now to stand together, to advocate for ourselves, to bring this community back.”
Porter thanked everyone “who continues to fight the food fight and lead by example ... The real power lies with the people,” she said. “I’m not against treatment. We want people to get the help they need,” she said. “But not before we help ourselves.”
Elder Johnson of Grace Chapel said that when the APT Foundation moves into a neighborhood, “crime moves in long with them and so do drugs ... What would be best for them and us is if they would find their own area.”
Elder Conyers of Grace Chapel said that in the midst of the proposal, “there’s unity in Newhallville, there’s unity in Hamden ... one mind, one purpose, praise God.”
mark.zaretsky@hearstmediact.com
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