A residential treatment center accessory to an addiction research facility is permitted in the planned industrial park district, the Riverhead Zoning Board of Appeals ruled last night.
The code interpretation clears the way for the development of an addiction research facility with an attached 130-bed residential treatment center proposed for the Calverton Enterprise Park.
The proposed Calverton Addiction Research and Education center would devote 63 percent of its facilities to research labs, offices, auditorium and meeting space, the applicant’s attorney, Vincent Messina, told ZBA members during a Jan. 9 public hearing. It will also include space to house research program participants in short-term, on-campus research trials and protocols. The board concluded the hearing Jan. 23, but reserved decision on the appeal seeking a code interpretation.
In its ruling last night, passed 4-1 with member Frank Seabrook dissenting, the board determined that the residential use — crucial for more effective research, according to the applicant’s attorney and expert witnesses — is a permitted use accessory to the principal research lab use. The “research and testing laboratories” use is called out in the code as a specifically permitted use.
The project will create significant employment opportunities for Riverhead residents, create a demand for the products and services of Riverhead businesses and generate significant tax revenues, the ZBA said in its written determination.
The $10 million “CARE:NY” facility would be the first of its kind to co-locate residential treatment and laboratory research, bringing research scientists and clinicians together to better understand what does or does not work in addiction therapy and treatment, according to Dr. Ricard Terenzi, who testified on behalf of the applicant in January. Typically it can take one to three years for research to be implemented in a clinical setting, he said. Having research and treatment take place side-by-side is crucial to truly understanding why some people become addicts and others, exposed to the same substances in the same quantity and frequency, do not.
“It is our belief that if you approve this, the primary source for addiction research will be coming from the Calverton site,” Terenzi told the ZBA.
Messina assured the board during the hearing that the treatment facility would not be, as ZBA chairman Fred McLaughlin put it, “a run-of-the mill drug treatement center.” Patients would be admitted only if they meet the research protocols as determined by the grant funding or the research going on at the time and they have a referral to the research program from an accepted source. They would stay up to 120 days on site.
The attorney also submitted an executed covenant that the applicant would forego any tax abatements available because of its nonprofit status.
CARE:NY was awarded a $1 million grant from the state economic development council in December.
The 97,000-square-foot facility is planned for a 34-acre subdivided site in the Enterprise Park owned by developer Jan Burman.
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