Some business owners are concerned about the downtown Cape Girardeau Recovery Community Center

CAPE GIRARDEAU, MO

We Do Recover Community Center is located in the 700 block of Broadway.

According to the Gibson Center for Behavioral Change, the center is a place for new addicts to recover, spend time together and connect with the services they need.

But several nearby business owners say customers who openly use drugs and harass passers-by are losing patience and business.

Seeing open needles in a Flesh Hound Tattoo shop is nothing new; However, owner Renee Gordon said she found used hypodermic needles on her property.

And she saw them used.

“I saw someone take off his shoe and use a needle,” Gordon told me. “Across the street on the sidewalk.”

Gordon’s tattoo shop sits across the street from the We Do Recover Community Center.

“My concern is that we’re basically going to lose business,” she says. “Not only us, but also our neighbors.”

I heard a similar concern down the street at River City Coins and Jewelry.

Owner Mike Sprouse said, “I’ve had a lot of complaints from customers about the abuse.” “I’ve had older guys who said they wanted in, but they saw this team and decided they didn’t.”

Gordon showed me a cell phone video she shot one Friday afternoon in July, showing a crowd outside the center.

“It’s a lot of commotion and commotion,” she said of the crowd, “which is scary for anyone to try and get through on the sidewalk.”

Shane Sprouse describes what he saw and heard from River City Coins.

“Yelling, yelling at people on the street. Sprouse said. “And all this negativity, the once peaceful street has turned into a nightmare.”

Sprouse also describes how a mother and her teenage daughter walked into a coin shop several weekends ago.

“And ‘Are you okay?’ I was like She said, ‘No, a guy grabbed my ass. I said, ‘No, Your Grace. are you kidding?’ She was like: ‘Mom, I want to go. I have to get out of here.’

I took these concerns directly to Ryan Essex, CEO of the Gibson Center for Behavioral Change, who runs this community center.

“We really want to be good neighbors,” Essex told me. “We want to do what we can to support local businesses. We are a local business.

Essex describes the facility as a support center. No treatment was given.

Instead, he told me, it was designed to provide a safe, substance-free gathering place for those recovering from addiction.

“Over 250 unique people walked through our doors last month.”

Essex said they have taken measures to prevent large crowds from congregating outside the centre. He told me that he himself had not seen overt drug use, but that mysterious substance use was an issue in Cape Girardeau.

“If someone sees something like this happening, they should call the authorities. Because we do not condone any illegal behavior in our facility.

I asked Mike Sprouse, a downtown business owner for 29 years, if he had a solution.

“Move this place to another area,” he replied.

Is this the right place to practice early recovery? I asked Essex.

“The right place is where you enter one of our doors,” he replied. “If someone is 20 hours or under the influence, we have other facilities here that can better meet their needs. And that’s where we try to deliver them.

These business owners tell me they are not opposed to what the center is doing. You wouldn’t think this busy downtown corridor was the place.

“I absolutely love the feel of downtown,” says Renee Gordon. “I love that people are starting to develop this area. I don’t want to see that go down. I want our city to grow in a positive direction. And now, I think we’re at a crossroads.

Both Gordon and Sprouse gave me the letter they sent to City Hall. Cape Girardeau Mayor Stacey Kinder said they were not welcome.

After I gave her the copies, she contacted me to share her thoughts on the situation.

“Well, of course the City of Cape Town wants to respond to any concerns, especially safety concerns that our business owners or residents have,” Kinder told me. If there are specific issues that all mixed users of our downtown face, we need to know about them. And certainly, as I said, if there are public safety issues, we need to respond, we need to be able to respond to those quickly.

Mayor Kinder said she plans to reach out to affected business owners.

I have contacted the Cape Girardeau Police for any calls I receive regarding the “We Do Recover” Community Center.

Records show four service calls for drug use on the street next to the center since May.

Ryan Essex tells me they have no plans to relocate the community center.

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