Land Donor Takes Back Kauai’s Unopened Youth Drug Treatment Center 0 New private ownership could prove more nimble than government. But old business model troubles persist.
Kauai’s $7 million adolescent treatment facility never opened to help the drug-dependent youth it was built to serve. But it has a new name, a new owner and a new goal to open by next August.
After years of funding shortfalls, lawsuits and controversial proposals to repurpose the eight-bedroom facility for other uses, Grove Farm, a nonprofit community development foundation, took control of the drug treatment center in late September. Kauai County reverted the deed back to the land donor after inertia set ambitions to open the treatment center on an uncertain course.
Grove Farm sued the county to take over the property — including the multimillion-dollar taxpayer investment to construct a 160,000-square-foot facility — as part of a bid to speed up plans to establish inpatient addiction services for youth on an island where people grappling with drug dependency must board an airplane to access intensive treatment.
