While Ward said the Central Avenue location would be convenient because it’s a short walk for addicts who live downtown, some local business owners aren’t welcoming the efforts and the crime they say it could bring.
Celebrating Restoration doesn’t own a building now, so Ward said meetings for addicts take place in his Middletown home, local businesses and on the streets. He said once a center is open, it will provide one place for recovering addicts to receive crisis intervention, mentor programs and job placement, though he stressed the site will not be a treatment center.
The goal, Ward said, is to free people of their addictions, get them off the streets, find them jobs, and thus increase property values in the city.
Ward, 46, a recovering drug addict, father and husband of two teens, said he’s negotiating with the owner of a building in the 2100 block of Central Avenue, across the street from Dollar General. He has applied for grants to fund the acquisition of the building and he’s scheduled to meet with City Manager Doug Adkins this week to discuss his plans. He hopes to have the center open by the beginning of 2016.
Ward said the intervention program is an outgrowth of the Heroin Summit that Adkins organized this year in response to what has been called “a heroin epidemic” in the city. Community leaders have met numerous times this year, brainstorming ideas how to reduce the number of drug overdoses in the city. The group is tackling five categories related to heroin: prevention, identification and intervention, treatment, post treatment and community activities. Adkins has said he hopes to see heroin-related deaths reduced in the city by January 2016.
For the first six months of the year, there were 28 heroin-related deaths in the city, said Jackie Phillips, Middletown’s health director. She said there were 55 heroin-related deaths in the city in 2014.
Countywide, there were 85 heroin-related deaths the first six months this year, up from 56 during the same time in 2014, said Martin Schneider, an administrator for the Butler County Coroner’s Office. There were 103 deaths in 2014, he said. At the current rate, there would be 170 this year, an increase of 65 percent.
Maj. Mark Hoffman, from the Middletown Division of Police, said as Middletown looks for ways to reduce heroin deaths, law enforcement is only part of the solution.
“The larger piece is intervention and education,” said Hoffman, who has met with Ward about his proposal. “We welcome anything that helps our community.”
Ward, a 1987 Edgewood High School graduate, said he sees his effort, the city and the police department “collaborating to make the community better.”
Two Middletown businessmen have differing opinions on the proposed drug educational program.
Steve O’Neil, owner of Stefano’s Italian Cafe on Central, owns several properties along Central Avenue. He has tried to “build the neighborhood up” and doesn’t welcome Ward’s efforts if it becomes a hangout for drug addicts, he said.
He wants the building to have set business hours, something like 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.
“Not some drop off center,” O’Neil said. “I don’t want people just hanging out in front of the place, milling around all hours of the day. We don’t need that in the neighborhood. Bad for business.”
Steve Davidson, owner of Steve’s Trophies, located one block from the proposed site, understands the concern that attracting recovering drug addicts to the area could adversely impact business, but he also sees the need for drug intervention in the city.
“Somebody has to do it,” he said. “It has to be somewhere.”
Ward said that in the last two years, his group has placed 80 people into recovery programs. Most of the funding has come from private donations, he said. He said the group meets at 7 p.m. every Thursday at Triple Moon Coffee Co., 1100 Central Ave. and the number of attendees continues to grow.
“I need an army,” he said.
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