Pubdate: Sun, 11 Mar 2001
Source: The News-Gazette (IL)
Copyright: 2001 The News-Gazette
Contact:  15 Main Street, PO Box 677, Champaign, Illinois 61824-0677
Website: http://www.news-gazette.com/

FIND COMPROMISE SITE FOR CLINIC

Kendric Speagle appears to be well within his rights to open a methadone 
clinic at 12 W. Washington St. in downtown Champaign.  The site is zoned 
for central business.  Uses permitted under that zoning designation 
include, among other things, clinics and laboratories.

Speagle's clinic would be an outpatient treatment center for people 
addicted to heroin and other opiates.  The nearest methadone clinics are in 
Decatur and Kankakee.  There appears to be a need for such a facility, 
although state and federal regulators will be the final judge of that.

But locally, the most pressing question is whether the north side of 
downtown Champaign is the best site for a methadone clinic.  This is a 
neighborhood where, within two blocks of Speagle's proposed clinic, are: 
The TIMES men's shelter; the Prairie Center for substance abuse; LW's 
Place, another drug and alcohol counseling center; and the Champaign-Urbana 
Public Health District clinic.

This is also a neighborhood where, just a few blocks south, people are 
investing time and money in trying to rebuild Champaign's evolving downtown 
and where, a few blocks west, citizens have undertaken a monumental effort 
to reclaim the oldest residential neighborhood in the city.

Putting another social service agency into an area where crime already is 
on the rise - very likely because of the concentration of social service 
agencies - is another burden for those with hopes of maintaining a 
neighborhood of beautiful but aging homes, or those helping to continue 
downtown's rebirth.

Although the city government says it cannot prevent Speagle from locating 
his clinic downtown, it can work with him to find a more appropriate site 
in the city.  It can find a location that is not amid an already dense 
concentration of social service providers or across the street from a 
children's museum or a few blocks away from an elementary school.  By not 
doing so, the city government adds to the obstacles faced by those who have 
made substantial investments in a neighborhood that has been changing for 
the better.
- ---
MAP posted-by: Jo-D