Saturday
September 7, 2024 
The Warminster Zoning Hearing Board meeting of July 24, was canceled due to the fact that Avenues Recovery Center LLC withdrew its application in a letter dated July 15, 2024. The letter did not give a reason for the withdrawal.
The chairman was asked to comment, but the staff, via email, indicated he had no comment at this time.
Avenues was scheduled to provide final testimony before the zoning hearing board Wednesday, after four previous meetings held over eight months, from the end of 2023 to the present.
Avenues was appealing an Aug. 30 interpretation of whether the proposed center at 225 Newtown Road, owned by Jefferson Health, constitutes a “hospital campus” or a “sober living facility.” Its plan would have required a special exception to the zoning code that would allow for the extension of an existing nonconforming use, and a variance to permit the facility in one of Warminster’s residential zones.
Attorney Michael Yanoff of Goldstein Law Partners, as counsel for Montessori Children’s House, asked many questions over the eight months of hearings, usually focusing on the seemingly conflicting testimony between the administrators for Avenues. He, as well as Zoning Hearing Board member Marci Sklar, questioned why the CEO and Director of Quality Assurance offered differing testimony on the issue of whether or not they would apply for outpatient licensure, in particular.
If approved, outpatient licensure would have enabled the center to serve a “patient who receives medical treatment without being admitted to a hospital,” according to the Oxford Dictionary.
Avenues insisted it would only apply for the outpatient licensure for insurance purposes and also to account for some overlap of care for the patients receiving inpatient care who would be discharged and might need “some level” of outpatient care, according to CEO Hudi Alter’s testimony.
When asked by Zoning Hearing Board chairman Steve Wojciechowski at the Feb. 28 meeting if there were a “condition of approval” that required not applying for the outpatient license, “would you consider that option?” Alter replied with his answer about overlap care.
Neighbors have been waiting eight months to ask questions and share their concerns directly with Avenues and have attended the meetings regularly since December 2023. Those who have attended received a flier about the potential effect on home price resale values if Avenues received a positive nod from the board.
Several residents told the Herald that they were not against “helping those in need” related to drug and alcohol addiction. But they said that having a facility such as Avenues in a residential neighborhood was “not appropriate” and “not safe for the children” if clients were to leave the facility unattended.
Avenues operates an outpatient rehab center in Warwick Township, plus recovery communities in several other states.
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