Planned Coulee Council on Addictions facility meeting neighbor resistance

Public hearing on building site Monday at city hall. 

There is some resistance to the planned relocation of a drug treatment organization on the south side of La Crosse.

Coulee Council on Addictions wants to build a new place on the 900 block of Ferry Street.

Some potential neighbors, however, aren’t happy about it. Those neighbors are city council member Jessica Olson’s constituents.

“I understand the hesitation, the concerns,” Olson said. “Every time there’s change in a neighborhood, the logical question is, ‘How is this going to impact me and, more over, what are the potential negative impacts?'”

The city still has to approve a zoning change for the site. Olson says the new Coulee Council on Addictions facility may be the best choice for the neighborhood, considering the kind of zoning that’s currently in place there.

“My concern here is that if there’s an expectation that, if this project doesn’t go forward, it will become single-family homes,” Olson said. “I’m looking at the current zoning and I’m not seeing that as a realistic alternative.”

Olson says, if a zoning change isn’t made to accommodate the new Coulee Council on Addictions building, the alternative to what could be built there, might not be any better.

“Would you prefer a 20-unit apartment building there?” Olson asked. “Because that’s what the real possibility is under the current zoning.”

The city council has yet to approve a zoning change that would allow Coulee Council on Addictions to build on the site. A public hearing on that request will be Monday in city hall.