Plainfield
The proposal by Mountain Valley Treatment Center to purchase, renovate and move into the former Home Hill Inn property depends on its ability to win a special exception from the Plainfield Zoning Board of Adjustment to operate as a day care center.
A hearing on the matter is scheduled for 7 p.m. on Monday at the town offices in Meriden.
Mountain Valley has run a treatment center in Pike, a village in Haverhill, since 2011, and offers a 60- to 90-day residential program for boys and girls ages 13 to 20, according to its application filed with Plainfield.
The private-pay facility is for children “suffering from severe and debilitating anxiety, OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder), school-based performance anxiety and related disorders,” according to its application, submitted by Lebanon-based attorney Bradford Atwood.
In an apparent effort to allay potential concerns from abutters in the rural conservation zone, the application notes that the “children are always supervised” and that children with any history of drug abuse are not accepted.
“It is not a drug or alcohol treatment center. It is not a program for delinquency,” the application said.
An accompanying memo to the Zoning Board from Carl Lovejoy, Mountain Valley’s associate executive director for communications and development, said more than 400 adolescents have gone through the program since it opened in 2011, and that “our residents are typically extremely bright, often perfectionistic and multi-talented. Sadly, they are also school- and social avoidant — hence the need for residential treatment.”
Lovejoy said Mountain Valley has outgrown its current facilities.
“We are convinced that Home Hill would be a perfect location for us to continue our very important work — it offers the optimal number of beds (MVTC typically has approximately 20 adolescents enrolled), proximity to the Lebanon airport and Interstate 89, and land for our residents and staff to use for therapy, agriculture, stewardship, and recreation befitting a program that has earned a world-class reputation,” Lovejoy wrote.
Originally built by Thomas Gallup Jr. in 1818, the brick mansion was licensed as a tavern from 1821 to 1835, according to the Plainfield Historical Society website.
Home Hill opened as an inn in 1983, and its restaurant was one of the top fine dining establishments in the Upper Valley. More than two decades ago, the chef’s Great Dane was known to wander from table to table, greeting patrons.
It closed in 2014, and recently has been on the market for $2.1 million, according to a listing by East Coast Inn Brokers on realtor.com. The property includes 14 bedrooms, 13 full bathrooms, 3 half bathrooms, a guest cottage, garage, carriage house, tennis courts, in-ground swimming pool and horse stables, according to the listing and application.
The property, totaling 25 acres near the Connecticut River, is assessed at more than $1.6 million, according to Plainfield Town Administrator Steve Halleran, who also is the town’s zoning administrator.
Mountain Valley has a signed “letter of intent” to buy the property from the owner, Walnut Inns Inc., but the deal is contingent on the center winning a special exception from the zoning board, according to the application.
Although on its own a residential treatment center “is not expressly permitted” under the six uses for the rural conservation zone in Plainfield’s zoning ordinance, it is “specifically allowed” by a special exception as a “day care center,” Mountain Valley’s application said.
Halleran confirmed that interpretation. “That gets them in the door, and I think a lot of it is going to depend on the neighborhood reaction.”
Thus far, he said, no one has raised any objections.
Mountain Valley is overseen by the Becket Board of Trustees, but operates independently of the nonprofit Becket Family of Services, according to its website, though it gets some accounting and related financial services support from the agency. Although Mountain Valley is a nonprofit, Halleran said the property itself would remain on the tax rolls.
If Mountain Valley gets Zoning Board approval, it also would need site plan review from the Plainfield Planning Board, Halleran said.
John Gregg can be reached at jgregg@vnews.com or 603-727-3217.