By Lea Kahn
The fifth in a series of public hearings by the township Zoning Board of Adjustment on a controversial application to locate a drug and alcohol detoxification center on Federal City Road is slated for Wednesday night.
A planner for the applicant the Simone Investment Group LLC is scheduled to testify at the public hearing, which starts at 7:30 p.m. The meeting will be held in the Township Council chambers at the Municipal Building.
The applicant is seeking a use variance to open a 38-bed residential detoxification center at 100 Federal City Road. A use variance is needed because a residential substance abuse detoxification center is not a permitted use in the Professional Office zone. The property in question, which consists of three office buildings, is located in the PO zone.
At the board’s Feb. 2 meeting, Leslie Hendrickson, the applicant’s “site location” expert, said that more than 500,000 people in New Jersey needed treatment for substance abuse in 2009. And of that number, there are about 12,900 people who live in Mercer County and the five surrounding counties who could have benefited from a residential detoxification program such as the one offered by Sunrise Detox Center, he said.
But only 5,115 people statewide received services in one of the 12 residential nonhospital detoxification programs in New Jersey in 2009, Mr. Hendrickson said at last month’s meeting. Many more could have been helped if Sunrise Detox Center had been in place, he said.
And at an earlier session in January, Linda Burns, the chief nursing officer for Sunrise Detox Center, explained the difference between a substance abuse detoxification center and a substance abuse treatment center. She said Sunrise Detox Center would “medically stabilize” a patient and then send that person to a drug and alcohol treatment facility for more help.
Dr. Morgan Poncy, who is the medical director and founder of Sunrise Detox, said the goal is to take patients off the prescription drugs or alcohol that they are abusing, and then send them to another facility for treatment.
Sunrise Detox does not take patients who have psychiatric issues, nor does it accept criminals who are referred to a substance abuse treatment center by the criminal court system, Ms. Burns said. It does not take walk-in patients addicts who walk into the office seeking help.
Neighbors, however, are wary and have expressed concern about the potential clientele.
Residents of the Traditions at Federal Point age-restricted development and the Federal Hill single-family-home subdivision, which border the proposed detoxification center, are concerned about increases in crime and increases in traffic from the delivery trucks that would be needed to service the facility.

