Mansions turn treatment centers: Armonk face-off
The Armonk proposal calls for a century-old mansion to be used as a site to treat youth with mental-health disorders.
A proposal to operate a youth treatment center out of a 12,000-square-foot mansion has made Armonk the latest Westchester community to grapple with proposed new uses for upscale properties in affluent residential neighborhoods.
Paradigm Treatment Centers, a California-based organization, wants to open its first East Coast facility on an 11-acre lot at 14-16 Cole Drive in North Castle. The mansion on the parcel, which has a prestigious Armonk mailing address, was originally built by celebrity journalist and fiction writer Richard Harding Davis in 1905.
The Armonk center would serve as many as eight young people, between 12 and 17 years old, at a time, providing therapies to help them overcome mental disorders such as anxiety, depression and trauma, Paradigm officials said.
The plans, however, have riled up neighbors who have filed a petition with the town, urging officials to object to the proposal.
Such conversions of large single-family properties have become increasingly common in recent years as the area residential real estate market remains soft on the luxury side.
A 'regular home'
Jeffrey Nalin, a licensed clinical psychologist and the founder of Paradigm, said having a treatment center in a comfortable residential setting is important to maximize the effectiveness of intensive therapy sessions that continue about 45 days on average.
"The reason that we do all of our treatment in regular homes is because we don't want to institutionalize these youths," Nalin said. "These are the youths that are high-functioning and talented — academically, athletically. They are bright people."
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The program would be priced at $49,000 a month, and health insurance would cover about 60 to 80 percent of the cost, he said.
Neighbors are against the plan partly because they believe the proposed facility will be a substance abuse treatment center.
"Paradigm is seeking to place its commercial drug and substance abuse facility in an exclusive, quiet community that has been strictly residential for decades and decades," stated Vivianne Edery-Rattet, treasurer of the Davis Pond Conservancy neighborhood organization, in a letter to the North Castle town officials.
Nalin said neighbors' concerns are "based on misinformation."
"We are applying for an Office of Mental Health license because we are going to be serving youths with anxiety, depression and trauma, not substance abuse," Nalin said.
A state Office of Mental Health official said although no formal application has been filed, Paradigm sent a letter to the agency to express its intent to operate a community residence program for adolescents at the Cole Drive address. The letter indicated that substance abuse treatment would not be part of the program, the official said.
Proposals to convert luxury homes in Westchester into something other than single-family use have seen mixed results in recent years.
In 2014, a 10,000-square-foot mansion at 100 S. Broadway in Irvington was transformed into an eating disorder treatment center by Monte Nido & Affiliates, also a California-based organization. A year later, the same company tried to establish another eating disorder treatment facility for up to eight adolescents at a 7,600-square-foot home at 65 W. Clinton Ave. in Irvington, but the plan was withdrawn in the face of neighbors' opposition.
Monte Nido also attempted to open a residential treatment center for adolescent girls at a 7,900-square-foot home at 2 Morris Lane in Scarsdale. But the company withdrew that plan after the Scarsdale village Board of Trustees expressed its opposition with a unanimous vote.
The company then moved that proposal to the 8,000-square-foot, single-family home at 233 Pine Road in Briarcliff Manor, next to the Trump National Golf Club. Neighbors of the property include Eric Trump, son of President-elect Donald Trump, and many came together to oppose the plan. But in May, the Briarcliff Manor village Board of Trustees approved a resolution allowing Monte Nido to proceed with the state approval process.
The center is slated to open in April, pending inspections and approvals, said Carrie Norman, a Monte Nido spokeswoman.
Monte Nido and Paradigm are both pursuing their plans under a New York state law, known as the Padavan Law, which was enacted nearly four decades ago to allow group homes for the mentally and developmentally disabled to bypass local zoning codes as long as they meet the state's standard. The law also applies to residential treatment facilities for children and youth.
Under the law, communities can object to group home proposals only when the area is oversaturated with similar facilities.
Out of 228 young people enrolled in Paradigm's program in California last year, 69 teens, or about 30 percent, came from New York state, including Lower Hudson Valley communities such as Bronxville, Chappaqua, Rye, Croton-on-Hudson, Scarsdale, Irvington, Eastchester, Mount Kisco, Mount Vernon, Chestnut Ridge, Montebello and Upper Nyack, according to Paradigm.
New York parents send their children to the California program because no similar option is available in this region, said Myrna Harris, a Katonah-based educational placement consultant and a former special education administrator at Blue Mountain Middle School.
"When their children need to go to a residential program, they have to go far away," Harris said. "I believe that Westchester has a deep need for adolescent mental health programs."
The proposed North Castle facility would benefit children and their families in the area because they could stay close to home, said Jerri Anna Phenix, Paradigm's project director who would be in charge of the Armonk site.
"Our children are often perfectionistic in nature, and historically, high academic achievers. Their mental issue can be triggered by their parents' divorce. A lot of children are afraid to come to the treatment because they don't want to give up going to school because school is very important to them," Phenix said. While children in the program attend classes at the Paradigm site, Phenix said Paradigm works closely with school officials to keep up continuity in their schoolwork.
"I always remind them, 'Just because you are here, and you are facing depression and anxiety, don’t ever let that negate your natural talents,'" she added.
A large estate like the one on Cole Drive would be ideal because it would allow the children to engage in different activities while being secluded from the outside world, Phenix said.
"It has to be a home that is big enough so that we could be respectful with our neighbors and respectful with the children’s privacy," she said.
Sagging luxury market
In general, Westchester's residential market has been booming in recent years, but luxury homes are still taking much longer to sell compared to other types of properties.
The absorption rate — the number of months to sell all inventory at the current rate of sales — for the Westchester single-family home market was 4.1 months in the third quarter of 2016. But the rate specifically for luxury homes, or the top 10 percent of the singly-family market, remained 10.2 months, according to The Elliman Report.
Theodore and Keryn Mathas, the owners of the Cole Drive estate, put the property — known as Crossroads Farm — on the market in September 2015 at the price of $5.995 million.
In September 2016, the owners, who handled the transaction through their company, Crossroads Farm LLC., signed a two-year lease agreement with Paradigm. According to the lease agreement filed with the Westchester County Clerk's Office, Paradigm has an option to buy the property for $5.65 million until Feb. 28, 2018.
At its Jan. 25 meeting, the Town Board is expected to make its determination as to whether it believes the Paradigm facility would cause oversaturation of community residential facilities for the mentally disabled.
If officials conclude it would, the state would then review the finding.