The fight to establish a women's recovery centre at the former Haldi Road elementary school is over.
On Monday, the board of the Northern Supportive Recovery Centre for Women announced it was stopping efforts to set up the controversial 30-bed facility that weathered two separate legal challenges.
Work to renovate the Leslie Road property was halted at the end of last year, said society board chair Dr. Michelle Sutter, and ultimately the decision was made to pull the plug.
"Unfortunately, the repeated issues we had got our supporters, both financial and otherwise, feeling quite nervous," Sutter said. "And I'm not sure, in point of fact, we would have been able to get things going again because of all that uncertainty that had been created."
The site has been a repeated target of vandals since renovation work stopped, Sutter said. "Windows were smashed, graffiti was written on the inside walls," she said. This despite the property being monitored by visits and security cameras.
Putting a halt to the four-year effort was done with heavy hearts, said Sutter.
"As you can imagine, all of the board is very disheartened - we put a lot of time and effort into it," she said, adding that it was potential clients who would be most affected by the move. "I think we desperately need this sort of facility in our community."
The society is not currently pursuing another location for the centre, which would use an abstinence-based approach to substance and alcohol addiction recovery.
"We're not saying it's not going to happen in the future, it's just not going to happen currently," Sutter said.
Mayor Lyn Hall and Coun. Brian Skakun, who supported and opposed the application, respectively, both agreed Prince George needed this kind of facility.
But Skakun - who was the lone vote on city council against the proposal two years ago - said it was too bad that this was the end result.
"After all the turmoil and money that was invested and hearts that have been broken and how divisive it was in the community, it's so unfortunate they pulled the plug now," said Skakun, adding he hoped there would be proper community consultation moving forward.
It was welcome news for area resident Tore Pettersen.
"I'm not surprised it's not going ahead mostly because of the dollars and cents I thought it would take to run that. The risk, to me, just didn't make any sense," said Pettersen. "In other words, the cost of what they were going to provide could not be met unless there was absolute provincial government support and I don't know whether that was available to them."
Pettersen led the most-recent legal challenge against the plan looking to overturn city council's April 2013 approval of an official community plan and site-specific zoning amendment.
The petition - claiming council's decision was inconsistent with the OCP - was dismissed by B.C. Supreme Court Justice Ron Tindale last May, who said there would be minimal developmental impact on the area from the facility.
It was filed following a spring 2013 meeting when city council chambers were filled for a public hearing that ran four-and-a-half hours with the majority of those taking the opportunity to speak stating their opposition.
The subsequent final reading was approved by an 8-1 vote, marking the second time city council had given the go-ahead to the application.
The first time was in 2011, but it was overturned by a B.C. Supreme Court justice who ruled the decision was in conflict with the city's official community plan. The application was resubmitted, this time with an OCP amendment, to the city in September 2012.
"This is about a democracy and this is about the process that we have in place to go through any kind of land-use issue, any kind of rezoning issue. And this particular one, the recovery centre at Haldi, followed that process," said Hall. "So that's part of council's role - to go through that process, whatever it might be. We have a specific guideline, a policy in place to deal with land-use issues and that's what this fell under. Some take longer than others."
City council's 2013 decision created a site-specific zoning at 5877 Leslie Rd. to add a therapeutic community to its allowable uses and the OCP changed to allow "temporary housing for vulnerable populations" in all residential - including rural - areas of the city.
If it were up to him, Pettersen said he would like to see today's city council repeal those changes.
"I don't think it does any neigbourhood any good to leave that in. I think it just exposes every neighbourhood in the city," Pettersen said.
The future of the school is up in the air with the property now on the market. The real estate listing advertises the 1,170 square metre building sitting on more than four hectares for $700,000.
Any future interested parties should take note from this process and ensure they make the rounds with the neighbourhood first, said Pettersen. "We're a strong neighbourhood and we like to keep it that way."
Sutter said it's a message the society heard clearly and one they'll take with them when they do decide to pursue a new location.
"I believe really the downfall of this all has been misinformation. And when I say misinformation, certainly not intentional, but the society did not educate the community well enough and they just didn't have the appropriate information," she said. "As with anything, some people still would have been opposed to it, but I believe we would have had a much greater acceptance if we had been able to educate them better.
"And that was our issue, not theirs."
