Oct 25, 2016 3 min read

A legal matter between North Strabane Township and a psychiatric facility trying to move into the township has been decided in Washington County Court, but a third party is attempting to once again block progress.

An attorney for Linden Vue and Majestic Hills homeowners associations on Oct. 18 filed a motion to reconsider, asking the court to reverse a consent order that allows Southwood Psychiatric Hospital to operate at 342 Linden Creek Road.

In November 2013, Southwood, 2575 Boyce Plaza Road, Upper St. Clair, purchased the former Bradley Center with plans to relocate a 40-bed residential treatment program. Steve Quigley, chief executive officer of Southwood, who did not return a phone call for comment, wrote in a 2013 letter to North Strabane Township Manager Frank Siffrinn that the facility offers “a specialized program that supports male children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorders and intellectual developmental disorders. We do not and will not accept children who have been adjudicated and/or convicted of violent crimes.”

Attorney Fred C. Jug Jr. of Pittsburgh, who represents Linden Vue and Majestic Hills, maintains the hospital is detrimental to its neighbors because it is located at the entrance of the Linden Vue plan of homes.

In his Oct. 7 order, Judge Gary Gilman reversed a September 2009 denial from the township’s zoning hearing board and reaffirmed the consent order.

“From the township’s perspective, we feel that the matter has been resolved,” said Siffrinn Monday. “Hopefully, the court upholds its original determination and decision. This matter has been going on for 10 years now. The (Linden Vue) association has appealed every decision adverse to it. It sounds to me like they’re going to continue to pursue all appeals available to them legally. From the township’s perspective, we’re done.”

The property has housed several psychiatric facilities since 1989, including St. Clair Health Ventures, followed by the Bradley Center, which operated as a residential facility for young people with mental illness from 1999 to 2007.

After the board of supervisors denied Gateway Rehabilitation Center’s application, the township zoning board held a hearing at Gateway’s request and also denied a nonconforming use continuation, reasoning that the property had been abandoned for some time. Gateway terminated the contract to purchase the property, so the Bradley Center was named appellant in 2010.

The court issued a consent order Oct. 3, 2012, in which both parties agreed the property was never abandoned, the Bradley Center owned or could market the property with the intended use as a youth residential treatment facility and the use as a treatment facility was not abandoned.

From December 2013 to February 2014, Jug filed several motions requesting the court vacate and reconsider the consent order, all of which then-President Judge Debbie O’Dell Seneca denied. On March 31, 2015, the court affirmed O’Dell Seneca’s decision to deny the homeowners associations’ request to intervene.