Lawrence Township Planning Board Approves Mercer Council on Alcoholism & Drug Addiction's Application

A site plan application filed by the Mercer Council on Alcoholism and Drug Addiction Inc. was unanimously approved by the Lawrence Township Planning Board at the conclusion of a 3½-hour meeting Monday night, Jan. 23.

The approval will allow the non-profit agency to renovate property it purchased at 1931 Brunswick Pike (Business Route 1) by doubling the size of the existing 3,963-square-foot building through the addition of a full second floor.

The number of parking spaces on the property will also be increased from 24 to 34 using space made available by restricting two-way traffic on the lot’s access lane off Brunswick Pike and allowing only a one-way flow inward from Brunswick Pike.     

The building – which was previously occupied by the Mercer Oxygen and Supply Co. – sits in between Slack Avenue and Carr Avenue, with two homes neighboring on one side and a business that sells pianos on the other, and the parking lot of the Slackwood Fire Co. firehouse directly behind. The rear parking lot of the building is accessible from Carr Avenue.

More than a dozen residents of that neighborhood attended the meeting and a handful spoke, voicing their concerns that allowing the MCADA to open its doors in the building could bring a large number of people suffering drug and alcohol problems into the area and, in turn, cause an increase in crime.

“We have been hit and hit hard with home break-ins and robberies,” Valley Forge Avenue resident Paula Nerwinski said as she told board members about how someone tried to break into her home last year and read off a list of nearly a dozen residential burglaries that have taken place in the last year on the streets immediately surrounding her own.

Geetha Arulmohan, the executive director of Mercer Council on Alcoholism and Drug Addiction, and Lance Liverman, a member of MCADA’s board of trustees, acknowledged that the agency’s name might give some cause for concern but they went to great efforts to reassure the board and neighborhood residents that the MCADA does not provide any drug or alcohol treatment or detoxification services.

Arulmohan explained the agency provides programs and educational services about drug and alcohol abuse prevention, and would primarily use the renovated building at 1931 Brunswick Pike for its administrative offices and as a venue to hold lectures for guidance counselors, social workers, teachers, law enforcement personnel and other professionals.

The non-profit currently leases a much smaller space in a building on Bellevue Avenue in Trenton. That lease is set to expire at the end of June. The agency currently has 10 full-time and five part-time employees and could increase its staff in the future if grant funding becomes available.

“We don’t hold any meetings for those [who are] addicted. We don’t do that. This is prevention. I want you to understand prevention from treatment. Prevention is doing the work before somebody could become an addict. That is what we do,” she said, explaining that the agency does not possess the necessary licenses from the state to provide treatment services.

Arulmohan said the MCADA does provide short term confidential employee assistance program counseling and also conducts “drug evaluations” on individuals who are ordered by a family court judge to undergo such testing. These individuals, she explained, are typically divorcing parents in the middle of child custody disputes against whom their estranged spouses have made allegations of drug abuse. In a large number of the cases the allegations are false, she said. A basic urine sample is collected to quickly determine drug use and does not involve any kind of laboratory equipment.

Only a handful of such evaluations are done each month, Arulmohan said. She said the MCADA carried out about 50 evaluations last year, more than half of which involved residents of Lawrence Township. The evaluations are done only once – not on a recurring basis – and the results are sent to the court, she said. 

 “What we do is we educate people,” Liverman said. He made mention of the 2007 death of Rider University freshman Gary DeVercelly after a night of binge drinking on campus and spoke about suicides that have taken place locally. “We are here to help. We are good neighbors. We listen. Whatever we can do for the community we do. We’re not an agency that will move into a community and have a problem. A lot of your children are educated by us. We do a lot of the drug and alcohol prevention [in Lawrence Township schools]. We don’t do anything other than positive things. I want to apologize if for any reason you thought we were bringing in a treatment facility or anything of that sort. There won’t be a drug addict knocking on your door saying, ‘Let me in.’ That isn’t what we do at all.

“Because of our agency, a lot of kids are live today, a lot of people have turned their lives around, and things have gotten a lot better for a lot of people. We could bring a thousand people in here for testimonies and you’d be surprised. So, please, do not think that this facility will do anything to harm your community. If I lived next-door to you, I would let this facility move there. The last thing we would ever do is harm your neighborhood,” Liverman said.

As part of the MCADA application, a licensed planner/engineer and an architect testified about various parts of the plans to renovate the building and the property. The roof of the building needs to be replaced so it makes sense to add the second floor at the same time, the MCADA representatives at the meeting said. The agency does not have funding to completely finish the second floor at this time. That will come in the future; only the first floor will be utilized when they first move in.

The agency’s normal business hours are 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., with one or two late nights a week. The MCADA agreed, as part of its application, that the building would not remain open beyond 9 p.m. on any night. Landscaping and other engineering controls will be used to block parking lot lights and vehicle headlights from the neighboring properties.     

Originally, 36 parking spaces were included in the plans, but the MCADA agreed to remove two of those to allow for better access to a trash enclosure in the rear of the lot and to increase the size of two handicapped parking spots. It was also agreed upon, following a request from the township fire marshal’s office, that the size of the access lane from Brunswick Pike will be increased from 15 to 18 feet to better accommodate fire apparatus in the event of an emergency. And it was agreed upon that the exterior of the building will be covered in brick and stucco to better fit aesthetically into the planned redevelopment of Brunswick Pike in that area.

In an effort to allay the fears of residents, the MCADA representatives agreed the agency would not, in the future, look to provide any drug or alcohol treatment services without first seeking the approval of the township. And in response to concerns about the building possibly being used for large gatherings it was noted that it was going to be classified for business use and not assembly use and, as such, would have a maximum occupancy limit of 41 persons per floor.

Before the MCADA application was heard, the planning board held its annual reorganization, during which new members were sworn into office, and Doris Weisberg was elected as chair and Kim Taylor elected as vice chair.

Taylor and Township Manager Richard Krawczun recused themselves from hearing the MCADA application due to possible conflicts.