Brooklyn’s Betty Ford clinic got the thumbs up from a local panel on Wednesday night.
Community Board 6 voted 24 to 9 to approve the Urban Recovery House, a high-end Red Hook drug treatment facility that will cost as much as $50,000 for a 28-day stay, arguing that the rehab planners have bent over backwards to prove their facility will not alter the neighborhood for the worse.
“There is no other high-end rehab center on the East Coast,” said Community Board 6 member Suzanne Turet. “I think it’s the sort-of mixed-use thing that we want.”
Owners hope to open the drug treatment center in 2016 on Richards and Van Dyke streets, offering an abstinence-only program with such treatment options such as yoga, acupuncture, and music therapy. The facility will not accept health insurance or government assistance money.
A stipulation of the board’s approval was that the center create a community advisory group before opening.
A few panel members held out against the get-clean center, saying that an upswing in non-industrial development in the neighborhood is threatening local jobs.
“I’m solely against this because of some of the rumors I’ve been hearing about what’s going on in the Red Hook area,” said Roger Rigoli. “Jobs are being lost.”
Project partners Johan Sorensen and Michael Mosberg, husband of “Girls” star Jemima Kirke, have said their facility will create about 50 clinical, support, and maintenance staff positions. They have also promised to hire locally whenever possible.
