The home of the Camino Nuevo methadone clinic in 175 Central Ave. on Tuesday, Jan. 30, 2024, in Albany, NY. The clinic is proposed to move to a new building off Washington Avenue.
The former United Way property off Washington Ave. Ext. where Camino Nuevo addiction clinic is planned to relocate from Central Ave. on Tuesday, Jan. 30, 2024, in Albany, N.Y.
ALBANY — During a recent walk along Central Avenue, I counted 40 or so vacant storefronts along the five-block stretch between Quail and Lark streets. Many of those vacancies were concentrated around Camino Nuevo, the city’s controversial methadone clinic, which was not surprising.
After all, the clinic’s impact on the neighborhood since its 2015 opening is well-documented.
“From the day those doors opened, it was like a bomb went off on the block,” Liz Hitt, executive director of the Homeless and Travelers Aid Society, a nonprofit located nearby, told me last year. “It truly was kind of like day and night.”
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A clinic serving hundreds of patients daily is beyond what the neighborhood can handle, say Hitt and others on Central Avenue, even as they acknowledge the need for addiction treatment. And with most of the clinic’s clients coming from outside the city and Albany County, a poorer section of Albany — the West Hill neighborhood — is bearing a burden that should be shared regionally.
Not that every problem should be blamed on Camino Nuevo. The neighborhood had issues before the clinic arrived, and some of the storefront vacancies, including a former CVS pharmacy, may reflect general retail pain felt since the pandemic. Still, the clinic shouldn’t continue to harm its neighborhood as it has. There’s wide agreement about that, including from Mayor Kathy Sheehan and other elected officials.
The good news, at least from the Central Avenue perspective, is that Camino Nuevo might be moving. Under a proposed deal, the clinic would buy a building on Washington Avenue Extension owned by United Way of the Capital Region and relocate to a suburban-style office park on the city’s western edge.
But not everyone sees the move as a positive. Businesses near the proposed location in Pine West Plaza are concerned about the potential impact, which is predictable and understandable. Given the impact of Camino Nuevo at its current location, it’s reasonable for new neighbors to worry.
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“We were told that this relocation is necessary, and the location ideal because the patients (several hundred per day) are falling victim to predators (drug dealers, prostitutes, etc.) that are gathering around the current location,” partners at the accounting firm Teal, Becker & Chiaramonte said in a letter to elected officials and news outlets. “Predators follow their prey … (and) they will find their way to this location if they’re financially dependent on this clientele.”
Such concerns convinced the Albany County Legislature’s Audit and Finance Committee to table a resolution that would have helped fund the move with $100,000. As my colleague Steve Hughes reported, it’s unclear if the sale would fall through without the taxpayer support.
“We’re waiting to see what comes next,” Terry Kramer, human resources director at Teal, Becker & Chiaramonte, said Wednesday.
Kramer and others at the accounting firm say the relocation was planned without, as the letter says, “any effort made to engage with the business owners, tenants, and community stakeholders that would be directly affected by this proposal.”
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Unfortunately, that’s an echo of what was experienced by Hitt and others along Central Avenue. While the state Office of Addiction Services and Supports says it requires certified opioid treatment programs to have a plan for security and community engagement, neighbors say planning, preparation and careful consideration were lacking.
That an elementary school is located almost directly behind Camino Nuevo makes the location all the worse, particularly since that school, Sheridan Preparatory Academy, nearly abuts a narrow roadway serving at some hours of the day as an open-air drug and prostitution market. If a methadone clinic wouldn’t be tolerated near an elementary school in a wealthy suburb — and we know it wouldn’t — why should it be accepted in West Hill?
On Wednesday, Hitt told me she’s generally pleased that attention is being paid to the clinic’s impact on Central Avenue. But she’s worried about what the potential move to an area lacking public transportation would mean for the small number of city residents who now walk to Camino Nuevo.
“We’ve always said we want the clinic to serve the local community,” Hitt said. “What we don’t want is people driving in from Amsterdam in Medicabs. That’s just too much pressure for this block.”
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In other words, it’s the size and scale of Camino Nuevo that is largely responsible for related problems. And Hitt, for one, questioned the strategy of centralizing addiction treatment, which, among other impacts, forces those in recovery to make long and frequent trips for treatment.
In fairness, OASAS did respond to complaints about Camino Nuevo by lowering the number of people the clinic could serve each day, but that didn’t fix the problems.
Will moving the clinic solve them or just shift them to a different location? Those are among the looming questions.
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