HALFWAY HOUSE PICKS NEW SPOT

The Gibson Recovery Center has found a new site for a halfway house it wants to operate for state inmates needing drug and alcohol treatment.

Cape Girardeau's Planning and Zoning Commission will hold a public hearing Wednesday night on a special use permit being sought to locate the halfway house program in a building at the corner of Sprigg and Independence streets.

The meeting starts at 7 p.m. in the City Council Chambers at Cape Girardeau City Hall.

The owners of the building, George Bockhorst Sr., George Bockhorst Jr. and Loy W. Welker, are seeking the special use permit. George Bockhorst Sr. is a member of the Planning and Zoning Commission.

The Gibson Center, 1112 Linden St., has contracted with the Missouri Division of Probation and Parole to provide a halfway house program for three years for 16 to 20 inmates who are within 90 days of release.

The contract would net the Gibson Center about $400,000 a year.

Center officials had previously applied to operate the halfway house at the center itself.

But that plan came under fire from teachers and parents of students at Parkview State School for the Severely Handicapped, which is adjacent to the Gibson Center.

Teachers and parents were worried that inmates might attack students or staff at the school.

There were also concerns because the Gibson Center is also neighbored by a day care center for the Head Start program and apartments for elderly and disabled adults.

In February, the Planning and Zoning Commission rejected the Gibson Center request for a special use permit and rezoning for the halfway house. George Bockhorst Sr. was one of six commissioners who voted against the request.

The Cape Girardeau City Council voted in March to deny the special use permit at the Gibson Center.

Dick Decker, executive director of the Gibson Center, says they plan to try again to get the halfway house up and running.

But the clock is ticking, Decker said.

"We have an alternate site that we're going to see if we can't work out. We're under a lot of pressure, though, because we pretty well have to have something operational by the 30th of June," he said.

The chosen site, listed as 20 S. Sprigg or 625 Independence, is a concrete block building in a C-3, central business district. The building has previously been used for storage.

The building will have to be furnished to house residents, Decker said, "and we can't do that until we know it's a go."

The Gibson Center will lease the facility, he said.

Surrounding the building are the Family Counseling Center, Fire Station No. 1 and the Cape Girardeau Police Department, all on South Sprigg.

"There's no schools anywhere close that I know of," Decker said. "That seemed to the big objection the last time."

The closest school would be St. Mary's, located at Sprigg and William streets.

Decker said he doubts there will be as much opposition to the new location "since at least a fifth of the land around it belongs to the city."

The Gibson Center itself is located in an R-4 residential district. When center officials applied for a special use permit to operate the halfway house, they also requested rezoning the Linden Street property to C-1 commercial.

City Councilman Tom Neumeyer helped lead the charge against the halfway house proposal when it was announced last year.

An original ordinance would have banned halfway houses from almost any part of the city. Neumeyer helped draft the current ordinance, which allows halfway houses in most commercial, industrial or manufacturing districts.

Neumeyer, whose wife, Terri, teaches at Parkview, said he objected to the proposed location, not the concept itself.

The new location at Sprigg and Independence is "much more tolerable. That first location was just about the worst choice that could be possibly made," Neumeyer said.

If the community doesn't object to the new location, Neumeyer said he will support the proposal.

"If we're going to have one, that's probably one of the better locations it could be in," he said.

Inmates would be housed at the halfway house, and would leave for work, school or employment training.