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The main topic of conversation in rural Bridgeville usually centers on the price of corn and soybeans and the lack of rainfall. That was until plans for the Shiloh House of Hope, a residential Christian-based treatment center and school for troubled teens, were unveiled for a 6-acre plot on a farm smack dab in the middle of the rural area near the Delaware-Maryland line about five miles west of Bridgeville.
For months neighbors have been debating the merits of the planned facility. Sides have been taken as the project has pitted neighbor against neighbor. No one seems to question the merits of the facility. They just fervently disagree about where it should be located.
Emotions reached a peak Thursday, Sept. 27, when both sides were able to voice their opinions during a Sussex County Planning and Zoning Commission public hearing on conditional use of the AR-1 zoned land.
Dozens of people spoke either for or against the project.
“It’s a matter of zoning; not a matter of God,” Eileen Craft, one of the many rural Bridgeville neighbors who opposed the proposed location for Shiloh House of Hope.
With that comment the stage was set for one of the most emotionally charged commission meetings in recent memory.
For more than three hours, people emerged from the standing-room-only crowd in the county council chambers to make impassioned pleas for and against the placement of the facility on six acres of the Lori Rider farm off McDowell Road.
The commission deferred action on the conditional-use request by Shiloh House of Hope until a special commission meeting starting at 3 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 17.
Commission Chairman Robert Wheatley asked for a show of hands at the end of the marathon public hearing. There were 75 people in support of the project and 66 people in opposition.
Letters and petitions from both sides have besieged the commission.
Robyn Sturgeon, president of Shiloh House of Hope, said the facility offers a safe haven for teens and families to turn their lives around.
“Teens need to know there is hope for them and there is a God and people who love them,” she said. “Our vision is to answer the cry of this generation.”
“We are not against the facility, but out there is not the place. People on McDowell and Craft roads are very close and now a bar has been placed between all of us,” said Sandy Smith, who is a member of a family who has lived in the area, southwest of Bridgeville, for generations.
“We can’t have one person making a decision for 50 other people who have lived there all their lives,” Smith said.
House of Hope program
Shiloh has been conducting a nonresidential counseling program based in Bridgeville since 2005 and is now ready to start its residential treatment facility. The program serves 10 teens and their families, including one family in Lewes.
Rider, vice president of Shiloh who owns 55 acres of farmland west of Bridgeville, has agreed to donate the six acres needed for the facility.
She opened the public hearing saying she wanted to help address the concerns by putting out facts, and she also gave a handful of letters of support to the commission.
“There has been distribution of misinformation and there is a great amount of fear caused by this,” she said. “We want to put that fear to rest.”
She said the program is not mandated and not state supported. “We are not a correctional center, but a recovery center where teens and families recover with an outpouring of love. We remove them from an unhealthy environment and unhealthy relationships,” she said.
The House of Hope program, started in Orlando, Fla., 20 years ago, bases its success on its requirement that a parent participate throughout each teen’s stay, Rider said. The local program would be based on the national model.
“The teens will be transformed and healed and they will be returning to a family who is changed also,” she said.
She said the facility, for up to 48 teens ages 13-17, will be monitored and supervised 24 hours a day and staffed by trained pastors, teachers and counselors. The program is only open to teens from the Delmarva Peninsula.
Money to run the facility comes from donations and fees charged to parents based on their income.
She said the countryside location is important. “We will be serving hurting teenagers who need a peaceful setting,” she said.
“At first I had my own concerns, but I feel very comfortable having this in my own front yard,” said Rider, who has three children of her own.
The proposed facility would consist of six dormitories, a school and cafeteria building and administration building. Teens would not be permitted to drive cars while enrolled in the program, Sturgeon said.
In support of Shiloh
Art Doakes, who lives near another residential treatment facility in the Bridgeville area, Cedars Academy, said he and his neighbors have never had trouble. “I want to put to rest the concerns of neighbors who are concerned about problems – that just won’t happen,” he said.
Doakes, who is also a counselor for House of Hope, said the area has a chance to be a pioneer in helping hurting teens.
Several current participants in the program spoke.
Rebecca, a mother of a teen who did not want her last named used, said the program has saved her son. “I’ve seen lives change there. I’ve seen change in my own son and in myself as well. We need a place where the whole family can be healed of addiction.”
Jenna Maddox, who has a 14-year-old son in the program, said Shiloh’s approach works.
“Together as a family you can experience the healing power of Jesus Christ,” she said. “Our son has been given a second chance. It’s not a dumping ground. They are not someone else’s teens – they are yours and mine.”
Against the location
The opposition, which comprises some of Rider’s neighbors, has hired an attorney, Tim Willard, to represent them.
He made it very clear his clients are not opposed to the philosophy of the project or the idea of Shiloh House of Hope.
“This is a land-use decision,” he said. “It’s not that it doesn’t belong; it doesn’t belong there.”
Issues he raised included increased traffic, change in the rural landscape of the area, safety issues caused by the impact of troubled teens living in the area, fear of escapees, the screening process, response time for fire, police and other emergency personnel, reduced property values and inconsistency with the county land-use plan to allow a facility of this type in an agricultural area.
Willard said the phrase private school is being used to describe the facility, but his clients disagree with that term.
“This is not a private school, but very special and it should be in a very special place with services to support it,” Willard said.
He said the students attending the facility have criminal background checks done on them, they have serious problems and will be living on the grounds 24 hours a day, which differentiates the facility from a traditional private school in Sussex County.
He compared the Shiloh facility to Seaford House, a residential facility for teens located in Seaford across the street from the Seaford Police Station. He said the national House of Hope is located in downtown Orlando.
Eileen Craft, who lives in the area, is opposed to the location of the facility. “I feel like I’ve been to church,” she said following those who spoke in favor of the project. “We are Christians and we do things for people and children. But we are concerned about what we see on the Shiloh House web site. We are not used to that. We don’t believe that it takes a village to raise a child – it takes the parents.
“We are not against Shiloh House if it’s in an area where it can go where people will not be unhappy and scared.”
Several people said they feared the opening of the facility would disturb the quiet, rural atmosphere of the area.
Wendy Boyce moved to the area with her two children from Baltimore to live in a country setting.
“This is a quiet, peaceful area,” she said. “I want to keep this a safe environment so my kids can play outside.”
Sandy Smith said the area is so quiet and out of the way people do not even lock their doors.
Contact Ron MacArthur at ronm@capegazette.com
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