Correction. We have corrected Frank Polster’s statement about back taxes. He said county staff told him the back taxes have been paid in order to file the special use permit request. The county GIS site still showed back taxes owed as of our deadline time yesterday.
Faced with a crowd of Grove residents complaining they’d been blindsided by the plan, a group seeking to open a treatment facility for up to 200 drug addicts asked to defer their application until they could talk to neighbors.
The James City County Planning Commission agreed to defer a decision until November so the applicants can host a community forum and answer questions on the proposed facility, which formerly housed the Colonial Manor assisted living center at 8679 Pocahontas Trail in Grove.
The project would convert the home, which has been vacant for a year, into a live-in facility for up to 200 substance abusers. The developers stressed the facility would not allow visitors, limiting traffic. Patients would be watched 24 hours a day by staff, according to the application from the property’s current owner, BC Secure Holdings Corporation.
The corporation’s director, Dr. Pedro Becerra, applied for a rezoning of the property and a special use permit.
Several of the 11 residents who spoke out against the proposed center repeated past complaints by community activists, who say Grove is always being targeted for objectionable projects like data centers or battery storage units. They said Grove continues to improve and they wanted to retain its neighborhood character.
Resident Casey Steiner noted there is a bus stop in front of the proposed treatment center, an elementary school and a daycare center nearby, and a planned community park half a mile away.
She questioned how much scrutiny was given to the idea by county staff who recommended its approval, saying it would have been different “if it were proposed in Kingsmill or Ford’s Colony.”
“There’s a substantial difference” between a senior living facility of elderly people and a treatment center for substance abusers, said another resident, Paulette Taliaferro.
The Grove residents said no one involved with the project had contacted them, and they had little time to learn details of the proposal.
Three of the planning commissioners asked the applicants five times if they had spoken to residents, and each time the applicants shifted the conversation to the jobs they would generate and talks they had with local hospitals.
Finally Nicholas Becerra, son of the owner and a property broker who arranged the deal, admitted Wednesday’s hearing was the first time they have met neighbors who live nearby.
Jamestown District Member Frank Polster, who pressed several times whether the neighbors had been spoken to, warned the applicants that would be the first question the board of supervisors would ask when the application reached them.
Halfway through the public hearing, Pedro Becerra told the commission he would like to defer the application so he could to meet with neighbors and hold an open forum at the facility.