Better late than never

Eight long years ago, Michael Kineavy, then head of Neighborhood Services for Mayor Thomas M. Menino, spoke before a panel of skeptical Charlestown residents in support of a proposed halfway house in their neighborhood.

He talked about the success of the famed Gavin House in his native South Boston and the scourge of hard drugs that was killing Boston kids. Then he asked: "Why wouldn't you want one here?"

In the next few weeks, groundbreaking will take place for that halfway house, now named the Charlestown Recovery House. Construction will be finished next April, and the two-story, 25-bed facility, adjacent to a new police station below the Tobin Bridge, will open next July.

I say "will" rather than "should" because of the people who will make it happen. Start with John Fish, owner of Suffolk Construction, who will build it. Recovery House board member Paul Tryder, who was a principal developer in the Gateway Center in City Square there, is project manager.

There's more good news on addiction recovery in Boston. The Eva Booth House, a women's recovery center in the South End run by the Salvation Army, was dedicated last Thursday. It has been operating since early August under the radar, but it just went public. We're talking a 74-bed unit that provides emergency shelter, substance abuse treatment, and help for housing, jobs, and the return of children who have been placed in foster homes by the state. The Booth House is in a building the Salvation Army already owns.

The Charlestown Recovery House, in contrast, started from scratch. It will be built from the ground up after surviving the license and permitting steeplechase.

Despite a savvy group of supporters who know their way around town, this place will have taken nine years to open from its first public hearing, according to Jim Travers, a moving force behind the facility. Imagine what the outcome would be if some good people without juice tried the same thing.

There are a lot of heroes in this story. Start with Travers, an old Kevin White guy out of West Roxbury who now lives in Charlestown and works for the real estate behemoth CB Richard Ellis. Add Tom Howard and Kevin Smith, volunteers who have worked the phones for over two years to place more than 300 addicts, most from Charlestown, in detox centers like Bay Cove Human Services.

John Fish is building the center at cost. He's taking no fee. Tryder will be project manager pro bono. Architect Richard Decoste designed the whole thing pro bono. Lawyer James Greene handled zoning board issues pro bono. Led by the late James Brink, Hale & Dorr handled the incorporation pro bono. Engineers working on the project would forget to send bills for their work. Teamsters Local 25 has donated $10,000. It goes on and on.

Tom Glynn, chief operating officer of Partners HealthCare, sent $2 million to the project. Citizens Bank has pledged a $1.5 million loan to help meet the recovery house meet the $3.5 million total cost.

Menino has been a stalwart behind it from day one, and Kineavy, someone you always want on your team, has been his point man. Menino gave the city land on which the facility will be built to the Recovery House through the Boston Redevelopment Authority.

Menino also pushed MGH, which has maintained outreach facilities in Charlestown for more than 30 years, to send counselors into the Charlestown projects, a great idea that MGH has been doing since last October. Also in reaction to Menino pressure, MGH is slated to open a substance abuse/mental health facility near the projects on Monument Avenue in late October.

Behind this good news story is a tale of two neighborhoods, Charlestown and South Boston, one cannot ignore. Everyone can draw their own conclusions but the facts are these: the Gavin House opened in Southie in 1963 as a halfway house for men fresh out of detox. The Cushing House opened in Southie in 1999 as a similar facility for teenagers. Its 16-bed boys unit and 12-bed girls unit are always full.

The Charlestown Recovery Center will open in 2008 - 45 years after the Gavin House. Before the Recovery House, Charlestown has had no facility focused on substance abuse - despite the fact that from 1999 to 2002, the average annual death rate in Charlestown from substance abuse, particularly heroin and OxyContin, was 50 percent higher than the rest of Boston, according to MGH.

The good news is there were no such fatalities there last year. Credit Howard and Smith for getting many more people into detox and a heightened awareness about drugs and alcohol fostered by the Charlestown Substance Abuse Coalition, a community umbrella group that surfaced in 2004 to prevent substance abuse.

But the pedal meets the metal in treatment, and you wonder why it has taken so long to get this halfway house built, why it took until 2004 for the Charlestown Neighborhood Council to approve it, why MGH didn't push harder and earlier for a halfway house.

Never mind. Better late than never. Now what about a women's facility?

Sam Allis can be reached at allis@globe.com.

Correction: Because of a reporting error, last Sunday's Observer column gave an incorrect location for a new Massachusetts General Hospital facility in Charlestown. It will be on Monument Avenue.