Maybe it’s time to revisit the idea of turning the former Summit Shock into a drug and alcohol treatment facility.
That’s one of the ideas floated Thursday at a two-hour Community Conversation on Substance Abuse.
Hosted by the Schoharie County Opiate Task Force, the event drew from the experiences of people like Cobleskill Police Chief Jeff Brown and Cobleskill Regional Hospital’s Dr. Roy Korn.
But one of the loudest voices came from the audience.
With her three grown children all in various stages of heroin addiction 58-year-old Victoria Hellen is raising her grandchildren—in all, an experience so difficult it literally drove her to drink.
“I couldn’t do it. I started drinking,” Ms. Hellen said, taking the floor. “Nobody wanted to listen.”
The child of alcoholic parents, Ms. Hellen said she had her first drink when she was 48; two felony DWIs followed.
“I prayed to get it,” she said of her second arrest, “because I needed help.”
One of Ms. Hellen’s heroin-addicted sons has been on the streets of New York City for 20 years.
Another has brain damage from overdosing too many times.
Her daughter has been clean for four years.
“But did she get help in upstate New York?” Ms. Hellen asked the Opiate Task Force panel.
“No. Because you don’t have the resources.”
Ms. Hellen was critical of Schoharie County’s practice of housing those struggling with addiction “at the yellow hotel in Richmondville” where all agreed drugs are too easy to get and where there have been fatal ODs.
“One because I couldn’t get there in time with my Narcan kit,” she said.
No one argued.
“We don’t have the resources in Schoharie County,” said District Attorney Susan Mallery, “so we put these people who are struggling with addiction together and we expect different results. We don’t have solutions.”
Except maybe we do, said Assemblyman Chris Tague.
In 2016, he said, he and then-Senator Jim Seward were involved in discussions to turn the old Summit Shock into a drug and alcohol treatment facility.
“We do have a place in Schoharie County,” Assemblyman Tague said. “We have the perfect place.”
And he issued a challenge to the others at the table, including Congressman Antonio Delgado, State Senator Peter Oberacker, District Attorney Susan Mallery, Judge George Bartlett, and Sheriff Ron Stevens: “We need to put a team together to get a program and a real place together.”
As proposed by Frank Stubbolo and Regis O’Neill Jr. of The SYFF Group LLC from Haupppauge in September 2016, the Eagle Heights Substance Abuse Treatment Center at the former Summit Shock would have been a 200-bed drug and alcohol treatment facility offering residential treatment, partial hospitalization, and intensive outpatient care as well as “sober homes.”
In a feasibility study intended for potential investors, SYFF said the “first rate” facility would create 100-plus jobs and jump the value of the 20-acre site from $1.7 million as-is to $40 million after necessary licensing.
It wasn’t until April 2018 that that idea moved ahead under a different developer, J-CAP Inc., which operates a 190-bed facility in Jamaica, Queens.
The downsized 125-bed proposal raised concerns about both financial viability and staffing, and though no one denied the need, that November the Community Services Board voted it couldn’t support the plan, effectively killing it.