Scope and impact were the issues for Haymarket

There has been an overwhelming amount of debate surrounding putting one of the nation's largest drug treatment centers in DuPage's second-smallest town of Itasca. Haymarket spent two years-plus and one would think enormous sums of money trying to explain how 240 beds fits well in a village of 9,000 people. Haymarket has hired attorney after attorney, paid expert after expert, recruited politician after politician and has had witness after witness speak trying to explain why their proposal works. They even went as far as to buying the Holiday Inn a couple weeks into a COVID shutdown without having village-approved zoning.

If this proposal made sense at face value, was all this work Haymarket did necessary? Was it all to overcome the possible stigma and fear individuals may have against treatment facilities or was it to force a project upon a small town?

Haymarket may have been met with discrimination in the past, but thus far to the best of my knowledge there has been no mention of discriminatory language or crime statistics. There has been just been two simple words, scope and impact.

Once those two words are understood in the context of Haymarket's proposal it becomes overwhelmingly apparent that enormous facilities which will monopolize a Village's resources are not in the best interest for their patrons or the city it's located in.

There are two solutions Haymarket could have considered before putting all this money at risk which was meant for treatment. Place this large of a facility in a town that can accommodate their needs (60,000-plus residents with several fire departments) or scale down the size of their facility. Haymarket had ample time to consider either one of those solutions; however, it chose greed over logic.

James Diestel

Itasca