Merchants, residents and property owners in East Harlem are organizing to defeat plans to bring a full-service treatment program to the heart of El Barrio’s retail corridor: 116th Street.

They are calling on elected officials who represent East Harlem to intervene and checking with the Department of Buildings to look for possible violations to the work permit.

They also plan to contact Metropolitan Hospital to find out if the health institution has the ability to treat the potential clients of the program, and they will contact the owner of the property to try to convince him that his long-term losses far exceed his immediate gains for leasing the property for such a facility. A petition to reject the proposed clinic has already been signed by hundreds of local residents.

Community Board 11 also approved a resolution to reject the project.

At issue is the future site of Harlem United’s East Harlem satellite facility, currently under construction just above the Washington Mutual bank between Lexington and Third Avenues.

The initial meeting on October 3 was called by the East Harlem Chamber of Commerce to discuss the impact such a facility might have on the neighborhood and to question how plans for the project were approved without full community input.

Harlem United is a licensed, Article 28 outpatient center founded in 1988 that provides: HIV/AIDS prevention, education and policy; meals and nutritional services; pastoral care and bereavement counseling; scattered-site supportive housing; and related case management services to adults in West Harlem.

Harlem United also runs the East Harlem Adult Day Center, which provides similar services to adult patients out of the Greater Emmanuel Baptist Church on East 118th Street.

According to Patrick J. McGovern, executive director of Harlem United, the 116th Street project would be an expansion of the six-year East Harlem program, with more comprehensive services being brought to the area.

McGovern, who attended the first meeting to promote his agency’s mission and to provide programmatic details for the planned site, explained: “We very much want to respond to community concerns. In West Harlem we faced initial resistance, but we won everyone over and we believe the same can happen in East Harlem. Our current program [there] has been very successful. If community leaders are open, we can assuage their fears.”

Although McGovern distributes press kits filled with letters of support from politicians and social service agencies in West Harlem, the director’s efforts did little to waylay concerns.

“I’m especially concerned about how this project had been pushed through without community involvement or support,” said Chamber of Commerce President Henry Calderon, at the meeting held on October 3.

Robert DeLeon, director of VIDA Family Services and a representative of the East Harlem Homeowners Association, said he has been fighting for over three years to stem the tide of special needs programs.

“The area is already oversaturated,” he insists. An East Harlem homeowner since the 70s, DeLeon says he has seen East Harlem change from a family-oriented neighborhood to a transient one.

Councilwoman-to-be Melissa Mark Viverito asked McGovern if only East Harlem residents were to be served by the clinic. McGovern said that they will also treat people from the South Bronx.

Although McGovern says that the East Harlem clinic will not be providing methadone maintenance services and that its clientele will be discreet, NYS Assemblyman Adam Clayton Powell IV said that any additional services will overburden the area.

“East Harlem is already home to eight homeless shelters, three methadone clinics, 37 drug and alcohol rehabilitation centers, and 33 shelters for the mentally ill,” he explained.

Adds Cristina Barreiro, owner of Casa Latina Records, on 116th Street: “We have worked hard to rebuild the 116th Street corridor over the last 10 years, and we are not going to allow things to revert back to the way they used to be. This sort of program simply doesn’t belong in a commercial strip.”

Calderon and others have formed a committee to pursue possible legal and media strategies to prevent the treatment center from opening as scheduled in February 2006. Other members include Barreiro, homeowner David Cutie, District Leader Evette Zayas, businessman Nick Lugo, and property owner Jak Cohane.