GREEN BAY (WLUK) - A voluntary drug and alcohol treatment facility once pitched for an empty mansion in Hobart will now be going into a former nursing home facility in Green Bay.
Summit Behavioral Health believes the former Bornemann Nursing Home site, a few blocks from Deckner Avenue and Henry Street, is the perfect location to help people battling addiction.
"There's a difference, one was a senior housing facility and this one is a drug and alcohol residential facility," said Troy Mayne, an attorney for Summit Behavioral Health. "From our standpoint, we think these are both appropriate health uses."
Summit does not need city approval to move forward with its plans for a 56-bed facility but was looking for a land use change to allow for on-site kitchen and catering uses.
The request brought out some neighbors to Tuesday's Green Bay City Council meeting. They questioned if the location for the facility is right.
One neighbor pointed out Hobart's police chief looked at other Summit facilities across the country when the company wanted to put the facility into the mansion, not far off Highway 29, that has sat empty for most of the last 20 years.
"He found incidents varied from 911 calls, disturbances, runaways or missing persons, threats of harassment, trespassing complaints, as well as arson and sexual assault," said Steve Konkel, who says he lives a few homes away from the new proposed site.
Summit also runs Willow Creek Behavioral Health on Ontario Road on Green Bay's east side. That facilities' executive director, Alison Denil, told the council the examples Hobart's chief provided likely weren't from facilities the same as the one proposed for the former nursing home.
"This is a 100% voluntary substance use disorder," said Denil. "There was a combination in his report, involuntary programs, acute psychiatric hospitals. They just called a random number. We don't know which ones they called, but the chief did share it was just random, picking out whoever got back to him, honestly."
Summit proposed the facility at the Hobart mansion earlier this year, but withdrew the proposal amid neighborhood pushback.
Green Bay Police Chief Chris Davis says his department has found it easy to work with Summit through the Willow Creek facility - which focuses on mental and behavioral health.
"Not a super high confidence estimate I can give you to compare a facility out on the east side that is going to be a little different than the one that is proposed, but I don't see any super big red flags here," said Davis.
The council approved Summit's request for an on-site kitchen, under the condition extra lighting and security cameras are installed around the buildings' exterior, including at exit and entry points.