Anger, outrage over methadone clinic relocation

ALBANY – The Camino Nuevo methadone clinic that’s been operating out of 175 Central Avenue in Albany for roughly a decade, and has been blamed for much of the urban blight and business exodus in that neighborhood, will be pulling up stakes and moving to the west end of town where new neighbors clearly will not be waiting with open arms.

“The minute I find a syringe lying on the ground, I might mail it to one of you,” said Jubilation Schoonmaker, a small business owner in the suburban-style office park off Washington Avenue Extension where the clinic will open its doors sometime next year.

That sentiment illustrates the fury and the frustration of knowing a methadone clinic is relocating to her neck of the woods.

For Cathlene Schwartzbeck, frustration might be an understatement.

“I’m a franchisee who has to uphold my franchise agreement,” Schwartzbeck explained to the city’s Zoning Board of Appeals Tuesday night. “Sylvan learning will most likely tell me I have to move if this goes through. I can’t necessarily afford that so I’ll probably go out of business.”

Albany’s Zoning Board of Appeals on Tuesday night unanimously approved a plan to relocate the Camino Nuevo clinic from Albany’s economically depressed Central Avenue corridor out to the Pine West Plaza.

 The new property is next door to the accounting firm Teal, Becker & Chiaramonte.

  “Us and I think other businesses are going to have to look outside Albany,” said Terry Kremer, Director of Human Resources at Teal, Becker & Chiaramonte. “It’s a shame because we’ve been here established for 55 years and to think that we’d have to leave the city for something like this is just really, really demoralizing.”

“it just mystifies me,” said Joseph Wiley, CEO of Next Step Federal Credit Union. “It almost seems like the city had an agenda here to get this thing off 175 Central Avenue, which was a disaster for ten years or more and just put it to another location and hope and pray that everything is better.”

The venue change has the blessing of Albany City Hall, which claims difficulty enforcing certain crimes being committed on the public sidewalks of Central Avenue.

“This new location is more than three-tenths of a mile away from the nearest residential property, has its own parking entrance, and is fully on private property,” David Galin, Mayor Kathy Sheehan’s Chief of Staff, points out. “That makes it that much easier to enforce trespassing and other violations should they occur.”

“We have staff of 65% female, many of them young just out of college,” said Kremer. “To think of the safety they are now going to have and it’s our responsibility now is something that we take very seriously.”

“We’re here where people are brining up things like their security measures that need to be taken and therefore it’s inherently bad,” Galin explained to the Board members. “We use security measures at city hall to protect the judges. Should we not have city hall because there are security measures that are needed?”

The target date for the clinic at its new location is the first half of 2025.