By Lea Kahn, Staff Writer
The Zoning Board of Adjustment spent more than three hours listening to testimony from the chief nursing officer and an administrator at the Sunrise Center drug and alcohol detoxification center Wednesday night, but ran out of time to complete its application to open a facility here.
The zoning board and the applicant — John Simone, who is a principal in the Simone Investment Group LLC — agreed to continue the public hearing on the application at a special meeting Jan. 19. The meeting will begin at 7:30 p.m.
Mr. Simone, whose company owns the property at 100 Federal City Road, is seeking a use variance to permit the Florida-based Sunrise Center to open a 12,000-square-foot detoxification center in one of three office buildings at the office park. A use variance is needed because a residential substance abuse detoxification center is not a permitted use in the Professional Office zone.
Linda Burns, the chief nursing officer for the two detoxification centers operated by Sunrise Center — one in Florida and another in Stirling, in northern New Jersey — said a residential detoxification center is preferable to outpatient facilities.
The staff, which includes medical professionals and counselors, can keep tabs on the clients at a residential detoxification center. A client in an outpatient facility may go home at night to a setting that does not support his or her effort to stop taking drugs or alcohol, Ms. Burns said.
The focus at Sunrise Center is on medical detoxification, Ms. Burns said. Certain medicines are administered to the clients to help them overcome their dependency on prescription drugs and alcohol, which are the most commonly abused substances. The clients at the $1,700-per-day facility also are given counseling, she said.
Warren Connelly, who is the executive director for Sunrise Center’s New Jersey facility in Stirling, testified to the need for another facility in this state. The decision was made to open the Stirling facility because of the large number of New Jersey residents — 206 patients — who traveled to the Florida facility for help in 2009 alone, he said. The Florida center has been open since 2004.
The Stirling facility, which has about 20 beds, opened last year and has treated 435 New Jersey clients of the more than 600 patients who have walked through its doors, Mr. Connelly said. There are 11 other detoxification centers in New Jersey, but only one is a residential facility like Sunrise Center at Stirling, he said. There is a need for more residential detoxification treatment facilities, he said.
There was not enough time for Mr. Connelly to complete his testimony, so he will present additional information at the zoning board’s special meeting Jan. 19. Additional experts are scheduled to present more testimony.