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A proposed halfway house for women transitioning from prison to the community has run into an unexpected opponent: the northeast Charlotte church next door.
Project supporters broke ground for the Center for Women on Friday. But Harbor Baptist Church on Old Concord Road remains optimistic it can stop the project.
The next episode in the controversy takes place today: At the order of Superior Court Judge Robert Ervin, the city's Zoning Board of Adjustment reconsiders a previous decision to give the site a zoning variance that allowed work to begin.
Church officials filed a court challenge to that decision in February.
However, backers of the center said that, even if the zoning decision is reversed, the project will go ahead, with adjustments. Construction is set to begin in September.
“Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine it would be a church that would oppose this,” said Myra Clark of the Center for Community Transitions, which is behind the project.
“I would think that reaching out to people who have lost their way is a core value for most churches. And I had hoped the women would be able to worship at that church.”
On that point, the church agrees. Harbor Baptist Pastor J.R. Farrington said he'd be thrilled to host the women at his church, which has up to 700 in its pews on Sundays.
But he views the proximity of the center as a potential threat to the hundreds of children who participate in the church's outreach ministry. Farrington said 500 kids from low-income neighborhoods attend Sunday services.
“This is not about us being exclusive, or thinking we're better than folks, or not wanting folks to have a second chance,” Farrington said. “I'm worried about the lack of supervision, and the fact that all these children are next door. … I'd be asking the same questions if this was located next to a public school.”
The center is to be finished by April at a cost of $1.2 million, the bulk coming from grants and donations. It will house up to 30 women, all of whom exhibited good behavior in prison, Clark said.
Only those who are within three years of finishing their sentences are eligible, and they must submit to regular drug testing, she added. Their crimes range from simple assault to theft, property crimes and drugs, she said; no sex offenders are allowed.
Clark said her group picked the site because the 2.8 acres were affordable ($585,000), had compatible industrial-institutional zoning, and was near public transportation. The spot is near Old Concord Road and North Tryon Street, between the church and a mobile home park.
The zoning board gave the project a variance not for its new construction, but to keep an existing building on the property that is 58 feet too close to the mobile home park, Clark said. The site will not be fenced in. There will be a fence and a plant buffer between the center and the mobile home park, she said, but nothing between it and the church. She said it's not needed, because the women will be under 24-hour supervision.
“I've offered to sit with (Farrington) and explain all this, so he will feel the children are safe, and he's yet to sit with me,” Clark said.
When finished, it will replace an 80-year-old house in the Dilworth-Wilmore area used by the Center for Women for the past two decades.
In that time, she said the center helped more than 900 women and 87 percent had not been rearrested within two years of leaving the program.
Farrington is familiar with the success rate, and it's one of the things that bothers him.
“I'm concerned about that 13 percent,” he said, “that one bad apple that may have evil designs, as far as a child is concerned.”
