News Analysis
The Hospital District heard proposals from four suitors interested in operating the facility the trustees bought in 2024 with $3.8 million of taxpayer money to become a sober home, but after digging into the operational details, they voted to explore selling the property.
“In light of the presentations yesterday, I think it behooves us to engage a real estate broker,” Trustee Paul Westcott said. “Additionally, I think that we ought to give serious consideration to option five of selling the property outright.”
New Horizons of the Treasure Coast, Rite Life Services, Thrive (formerly Substance Awareness Center) and PUR Health & Wellness, which had submitted letters of intent summarizing what they’d like to do with the property, made presentations at the Nov. 19 meeting on what they would do with the property in the 600 block of 10th Street just outside Vero Beach city limits.
Ideally, the Hospital District has been seeking a tenant-partner that would pay market rent and break even operating its facility, with taxpayers only supporting services for indigent patients helped there.
But the problem is the Hospital District finally seems to be coming to a belated understanding that its mission, as determined by the legislative act creating it to support health and medical services for Indian River County residents, is in direct conflict with this property’s residential zoning which prohibits performance of health and medical services on the premises.
At the time of the purchase, the trustees were assured the zoning would not be a problem. But reporting by this paper revealed that the Hospital District’s negotiating team never paid the $75 county planning fee to get an official written opinion on the zoning prior to the purchase.
Without a major re-zoning effort, the district essentially spent taxpayer money to buy, renovate and maintain buildings it cannot use without stretching the task it’s meant to perform.
Even if a tenant set out to get the needed zoning – an effort neighbors of the facility seem certain to oppose – it could take many months and cost $15,000 or more in fees plus thousands on legal and engineering work.
“I’m concerned about the zoning,” Trustee Karen Deigl, who was the trustees’ point person on the December 2024 property deal, finally conceded.
Following the four presentations by potential drug and alcohol facility operators, Westcott made a motion at a meeting the following day that would move the district toward getting out of the sober home business entirely.
“I move that we direct staff to engage a real estate broker, appropriate real estate broker, to assist us in the analysis of the potential sale of the 10th Street property,” he said.
The motion was seconded and passed unanimously. The next step would be for trustees to declare 620 and 650 10th St. to be surplus government property, and list it for sale.
