Methadone clinic may open in March Bangor facility spurs City Council to mull moratorium on future sites

BANGOR – As Colonial Management Group continues to work toward a March opening for its Bangor methadone clinic, city officials are considering a moratorium on any other drug treatment centers that might come their way.

On the agenda of Monday night’s City Council meeting, which begins at 7:30 p.m. at City Hall, is a proposed ordinance that would place a 180-day moratorium on issuing certificates of occupancy for drug treatment facilities.

If necessary, the moratorium could be extended for an additional 180 days, according to the proposed council order.

The moratorium was prompted by Colonial Management Group’s plan for a clinic at Maine Square Mall, a busy retail shopping center across Hogan Road from the Bangor Mall.

Colonial’s plan caught the city off guard, largely because Acadia Hospital already had been running a methadone program for more than three years.

The moratorium would not apply to Colonial’s proposal, which already is in the pipeline and as such would be grandfathered, or exempted, from the measure, City Solicitor Norman Heitmann said Friday.

Headquartered in Orlando, Fla., Colonial Management Group operates nearly 50 clinics in 17 states, including nearby New Hampshire.

The company has picked Bangor as the site for its first clinic in Maine and is in the process of obtaining the needed state and federal approvals.

When the licensing process will be completed remained unclear Friday.

“I haven’t heard anything,” Heitmann said.

Kim Johnson, director of the state’s Office of Substance Abuse, couldn’t be reached for comment Friday.

The point of the moratorium is to give the newly established Special Committee on Land Use Policy Governing Medical Facilities time to review current regulations regarding all types of medical facilities, including methadone clinics, and, if appropriate, to implement the panel’s recommendations before any new clinics open, City Manager Edward Barrett said Friday.

Members of the special committee, established last month by the council, will be named soon, possibly next week, Barrett said.

On Monday, the ordinance will undergo a first reading and be referred to the council’s transportation and infrastructure committee, which is slated to discuss it during a Jan. 18 meeting.

After the committee is finished with its review, the moratorium proposal will return to the full council for a decision.

On Friday, Lynn Costigan, Colonial’s associate director for new development, said construction at the clinic site in the Maine Square Mall was on schedule.

Work crews are down to finishing touches, and next will come furniture and equipment, Costigan said Friday in a telephone interview.

“I’m in the process of interviewing [applicants for the clinic’s staff],” she said.

Costigan also said that she and other Colonial officials were still putting together their responses to the city’s written list of roughly 30 questions raised by city officials and the public during a late November workshop at City Hall.

The company’s written responses will be shared with city councilors and the public, council Chairman Frank Farrington said during the November session.