ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (AP) - A long-established Atlantic City company plans to convert part of a property it owns to cut back on a dying business and move into a growth industry.
Ole Hansen & Sons received approval Thursday from the city’s Zoning Board for a related company to start a drug and alcohol detoxification facility in a hotel-type building that Hansen formerly used as overnight rooms for casino-bus drivers at its Atlantic City Transportation Center.
The Press of Atlantic City (https://bit.ly/2kqEHXE) reports that the detox operation will be headed by Jennifer Hansen, co-founder of Enlightened Solutions, which treats substance abusers. She’s the fourth generation of her family involved in a business founded by Ole Hansen in 1931, and she introduced herself to city officials Thursday by saying she’s “been clean for almost 21 years.”
She went public as a recovering heroin addict in 2003, and since then has helped establish a series of places to help others deal with drug problems. They include several Hansen Houses and Serenity Houses in Atlantic County.
“The demand is so great, we can’t even address it,” Hansen said. “There are so many people dying every day, and we know we can do something about that.”
She believes she found the perfect place for that right in the family business - a now-underused part of the business just off Albany Avenue, or the Black Horse Pike.
David Goddard, Ole Hansen’s president, said bus drivers don’t stay overnight in the city anymore. Most come for the day and leave by early evening.
“There was no demand for sleeping rooms after about 2005,” he said.
And the number of buses coming to the city in the first place has been in a free-fall. In that same year of 2005, Goddard said, the Atlantic City Transportation Center counted about 129,000 buses paying to park there.
“This last year, we were under 20,000,” he said.
South Jersey Transportation Authority statistics show that in 2003, almost 6.8 million people came to Atlantic City by bus. In 2015, years after casinos started opening in every neighboring state, that number was less than 1.3 million.
In response, Ole Hansen has tried several ways to make use of the 30 or so acres it owns near the city’s border with Egg Harbor Township’s West Atlantic City section.
The company opened the Atlantic City Boatyard, an “in-out” marina - boats are stored on dry land and forklifted in and out of the water. Goddard said that business will keep operating, although the marina actually stores more boats in the winter than in the summer, when most owners want them in the water.
Ole Hansen also opened the Atlantic City RV Resort last year, to give people who like camping in their recreational vehicles a place to stay inside the city limits.
“We just haven’t been able to find a demand for RV parking,” Goddard said, but added that “we’re continuing to try to find a niche for this property” which also now houses the corporate offices.
With the growing opioid epidemic, currently being highlighted by Gov. Chris Christie, the company believes it has found one use.
The rooms are already there to have a 26-bed detox center that Jennifer Hansen said would save many South Jersey people a trip of an hour or two to Toms River or Summit, in Union County.
“There are not a lot of detox beds in the state,” she said, so she’s sure there’s a market for these.
Enlightened Solutions expects to have about 60 people, including security and medical staff, working at the Atlantic City facility. Suzanne Conte, an alcohol and drug counselor, told city officials the average stay for patients will be five to 10 days, and the facility will run 24 hours a day and be licensed by the city, Atlantic County and the state.
The Zoning Board voted unanimously to approve the project, with no public objections.
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Information from: The Press of Atlantic City (N.J.), https://www.pressofatlanticcity.com
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