The Little Italy Neighborhood Association joined with other community groups and individuals to speak against a conditional rezoning of 501-503 Albemarle Street to permit a second floor Suboxone Clinic. The Baltimore Board of Municipal & Zoning Appeals voted and did not approve the conditional use of the property.

Below is the text of the LINA statement presented at the hearing:

Good afternoon and thank you for this opportunity to speak before the Board. I’m Dan Sutherland Weiser, the vice president of the Little Italy Neighborhood Association – LINA. We represent residents, home and business owners. We stand along with our neighbors in opposition to this conditional use.

I’d like you to consider the issue from two points of view. MATclinics and the Little Italy neighborhood. I’d like to discuss whether the conditional use is Negative or Bad, Neutral, or a Good or Positive use.

MATclinics choose Little Italy because it is a positive for their organization. The organization already leases property in Little Italy where they do administrative work for the several businesses which they own and operate. That’s pretty convenient

Their office is above a dentist office where, MATclinics believes it can get a conditional use for a suboxone clinic. They will move their administrative operations to a larger office in Dundalk. Again, pretty convenient.

If MATclinics did not already lease an office in Little Italy, it would not have chosen this location, it would have gone elsewhere. The Little Italy location is smaller than their other operations, but from their business standpoint it is so convenient, they had to ask themselves, “Why not?” This proposed conditional use is simply driven by the convenience of the clinic’s operator.

Now, let’s consider this from the point of view of the Little Italy residents, home, and business owners.

You know Little Italy. We are a small tight knit community. A traditional jewel for Baltimore visited by city and regional residents and by tourists from all over the world. We are surviving and slowly coming back from the devastating affects of the pandemic that shut down some of our well-known restaurants. Still, we persevere. The Pandola Center holds classes accessible to all people, our bocci courts offer outdoor exercise and entertainment, and St. Leo’s provides spiritual counseling and hosts Narcotics Anonymous for those suffering from addiction, and supports the Helping Up Mission which provides hope to the addicted, the homeless and those living in poverty. We are providing for others as we pull ourselves up.

There is a lot of positive momentum in Little Italy. We are an active community with well-established homes, even centennial homes. We have restaurants that have been around for decades.. and new ones that are popping up from Ovenbird, Saturday morning Café, and RMYKS (Re-Mix).

Our affordable houses provide an accessible path to home ownership for people of different backgrounds right on the edge of the high-end and exclusive Harbor East.

The addition of a suboxone clinic puts this at risk.

You can have the best suboxone clinic in the world: restricted hours, no drugs on site, and completely digitalized, but still it can attract bad actors.

I’ve talked with city law enforcement, city prosecutors, and city pharmacists – they all agree, patients are targeted on their way into and out of the clinics and after they pick up their prescriptions at pharmacies. It will be especially easy to target patients at this location since there is only one entrance to the Matclinic… unlike other clincs which are sometimes in large buildings that house several different businesses and offices.

For the operators of MATclinics the clinic is a positive, born out of convenience. But, given many opportunities, Mr. Dawson and his team have been unable to show how the clinic is a positive or even a neutral addition to the community. In fact, while Mr. Dawson and his team say they like and value Little Italy, they - themselves, will abandon the community and move their administrative personnel away if the clinic opens.

Mr. Dawson, even at this late hour, I respectfully ask you to withdrawal your application for this clinic and stand with the neighborhood you say you respect.

Thank you very much!