Group challenges plans for crisis center near Chinatown International District

A neighborhood group has sent a 20-page letter to Seattle planning officials, accusing the city of cutting corners in the land-use code to help usher in a new mental-health crisis center near Chinatown International District.

Attorney Peter Eglick, who represents the Jackson Place Alliance for Equity, contends in the letter to the Department of Planning and Development that the project has been wrongly categorized as a hospital.

In fact, he said, the facility at 1600 South Lane Street would be run more like a jail. The planning department has the final say and is still reviewing the project.

Scheduled to open this summer, the center represents a new effort by King County to divert people in crisis — often homeless, drug-addicted or mentally ill — away from costly emergency-room visits and repeat jail bookings.

Police or other first responders could decide to bring people to the county-funded center, for instance, if they appear confused or disoriented in public. Or they could be brought in after being stopped for a minor offense, such as driving with an expired license, and they are showing symptoms. People have to be admitted willingly.

The facility, which would be on 24-hour lockdown, would offer treatment for up to 46 people at a time, and referrals for longer-term housing and shelter. The maximum stay would be two weeks.

"The whole idea is to provide a therapeutic environment for individuals, for whom it makes absolutely no sense to send to the ER or to jail," said Bill Hobson, executive director of the Downtown Emergency Service Center (DESC), the nonprofit that would run the center.

Neighbors say it's a bad fit for a residential block, and they worry that those receiving treatment would be coming in at the height of a crisis and could be violent. Eglick, who's working on their behalf, said city officials are eager to move forward with a project that's been endorsed by various City Council members and City Attorney Pete Holmes.

Eglick argues that planners are going about the approval process all wrong.

Before the center opens, DESC needs a building permit. This type of project isn't addressed in city zoning law, so planning officials decided it was most similar to a hospital.

In this location, a hospital wouldn't require a zoning change or a public hearing and neither would this center, said Alan Justad, department spokesman.

"When we look at the operations, we feel the closest use in our land use code is hospital," Justad wrote in an e-mail.

Eglick disagrees.

"We're saying 'baloney,' " Eglick said. "This (center) has an incarceration aspect to its core, which is completely antithetical to a hospital."

If it is approved, neighbors could not appeal, Justad said, but would have the option of suing the city.

In the letter to the department, Eglick wrote the center should be classified as either a jail or a work-release center — uses that would be prohibited at the site, he said.

The idea for the Crisis Solutions Center has long been in the works. For years, elected officials have grappled with how to handle the exorbitant costs and systematic burdens of what to do with people suffering from drug addiction and mental illness who revolve through emergency rooms and jails.

In 2007, the King County Metropolitan Council approved a one-tenth of 1 percent sales tax to help fund programs to deal with the problem. The center would operate on a $6 million annual budget.

The Jackson Place site was chosen because of its proximity to Interstate 90, Interstate 5, and Harborview Medical Center, Hobson said. Tukwila also was considered at one point.

Hobson said the crisis-diversion model reduces expenses to taxpayers by getting troubled people the care they need.

On South Lane Street, new town homes sit across from century-old houses. The neighborhood has about 1,600 people living in an area roughly bordered by Rainier Avenue South, I- 90, South Jackson Street and Judkins Park. More families have moved here in the past 10 years, according to 2010 data. And these residents are arriving with higher incomes.

Kwame Amoateng is among the newcomers. He moved to Jackson Place in 2008 because there was more affordable housing, as well as quick and easy access to downtown, where he works as an attorney. He would be living less than 500 feet away from the center, he said.

"People, especially parents, haven't received any assurances about how their security will be safeguarded," Amoateng said.

At community meetings, neighbors have asked Hobson about the process for screening out people with violent criminal histories.

Hobson said he understands residents' fears. He also lives in the neighborhood with his wife and 13-year-old daughter. He said the center would be "intensively staffed," with a ratio of three clients to one employee during the day, and four to one at night. And "people will not be able to come and go."

He added that DESC wants its staff to have access to criminal-history databases from police, so that first responders, such as Medic One workers, could phone in a name and check if that person has a violent record. If so, that person would not be admitted to the center, Hobson said.

But this plan hasn't been finalized.

For now, Amoateng and the others in the neighborhood are waiting to see what happens.

Sonia Krishnan: 206-515-5546 or skrishnan@seattletimes.com