Bernardi Joins Fight Against Nancy Reagan Drug Center

Los Angeles City Councilman Ernani Bernardi demanded Friday that the proposed Nancy Reagan Center for drug-abuse treatment prove that it will not adversely affect a Lake View Terrace neighborhood.

Bernardi said in a letter to city planning officials that the center would put “dramatic demands on the resources” of the Los Angeles Police Department because security and traffic problems would result from frequent visits by the First Lady and because crimes could be committed by court-referred clients.

“Your staff determination that the proposed development will have no impact upon community public services, specifically upon police protection, community traffic circulation and noise, is incorrect,” Bernardi wrote in the Friday letter addressed to Planning Director Kenneth C. Topping.

Bernardi joined County Supervisor Mike Antonovich and two Lake View Terrace homeowner groups in writing letters questioning a preliminary recommendation by the city Environmental Review Committee that the center--to be put in the abandoned Lake View Medical Center--would not be so disruptive as to require an environmental impact report.

By demanding that the city require the report, Bernardi acknowledged that he hopes to keep the center out of Lake View Terrace. If the Planning Department refuses to take action, he said he will ask the City Council to require the report. And if that fails, he said, he is ready to go to court to force the issue.

“I know it’s not compatible, and I believe an objective EIR is going to show that this will create major problems in the environment of that area,” he said. “This is an area that’s made great improvements in the past 2 to 3 years. . . . To add 210 more drug dealers or users is just going to set back the progress that’s been made up there.”

The center, publicly proposed in the spring, would provide counseling and classes for 150 live-in adolescents with drug problems--some of them referred by judges as an alternative to Juvenile Hall or prison--and up to 60 adults. It would also function as a research center for Phoenix House, the national drug-treatment program that persuaded Nancy Reagan to lend her name to the project.

On Friday, Phoenix House Vice President Larraine Mohr described Bernardi’s comments as “scare tactics.”

“This is all totally unfounded and exaggerated,” Mohr said. “For one thing, I assume that when the First Lady comes, she’ll possibly have a driver and that is it.”

Phoenix House has provided an office for Reagan and, in a recent interview, she said she plans to spend a significant amount of time at the center after leaving the White House.

Mohr said the 10 other Phoenix House centers have not strained police departments. She said various law enforcement officials have written letters supporting Phoenix House’s Lake View Terrace application, including officers from the Los Angeles Police Department.

Topping could not be reached for comment Friday, but Associate Zoning Administrator John Parker has said all protests of the committee’s recommendation are forwarded to the city zoning administrator’s office. The first public hearing on the center is scheduled before the zoning administrator at 9:30 p.m. Jan. 20 at the Lake View Terrace Recreation Center, 11075 Foothill Blvd.

Phoenix House and friends of the First Lady have raised more than $3 million of the estimated $10 million needed to buy and refurbish the medical center, which declared bankruptcy in early 1986. The nonprofit company was granted an option to buy the hospital in a federal bankruptcy hearing last June.