Oct 13, 2014 3 min read

CHARLEROI – A new heroin addiction drug treatment clinic in Charleroi is fighting on two fronts against attempts to close the business.

New Leaf Recovery Services is part of a lawsuit filed last month in Washington County Court seeking to invalidate its lease. Meanwhile, the borough is attempting to close the business at 90 Chamber Plaza, claiming the local zoning ordinance doesn’t permit it to be in operation on the property.

“It’s right beside a Head Start building,” borough solicitor Alan Benyak said, citing one of the reasons Charleroi officials object to New Leaf’s location.

William J. Hughes, a Peters Township businessman who’s alleged to be under federal investigation in a separate case involving kickbacks to physicians, entered into a 99-year agreement to lease the former Rax Restaurant building from the Trustees of Charleroi Community Park. The lease involved Hughes’ business, G&B Property Management of Pittsburgh, and called for use of the building for a pain-management medical office.

That plan changed a month later, when Hughes subleased the property for five years to Robert Belluso, a Monongahela physician who established New Leaf in the building, the lawsuit by the property’s trustees claims. Belluso agreed to pay Hughes $85,000 for the sublease.

The trustees are asking the court to find Hughes in breach of his lease contract and evict New Leaf from the building in a three-count lawsuit that also claims the business is trespassing on the property.

Charleroi attorney Keith Bassi, who is representing the trustees in the case, declined to comment until there is a ruling in the other matter involving New Leaf that was heard Friday by the Charleroi zoning hearing board.

Attorney Mark Caloyer, who is representing New Leaf in the lawsuit, said he believes the business has a right to be in the building under the lease agreement.

“He is a physician’s practice,” Caloyer said.

It’s not like a methadone clinic, where addicts go to receive their treatment drugs. Belluso consults with patients and gives them prescriptions, Caloyer said.

The zoning hearing board received testimony on a borough complaint that New Leaf cannot operate on property zoned for heavy industry. It was held a day after District Judge Larry Hopkins dismissed six citations filed by the borough against New Leaf that raised the same issue, said Charleroi attorney Dennis Paluso, who represents the suboxone clinic in the local cases.

Suboxone is a prescription drug used to treat opiate addiction.

Paluso said he believes the borough is “discriminating against drug addicts” in a county with a known heroin problem.

He said there has never been a business in the building since 1978 that was a “permitted use” under the borough zoning ordinance.

On Friday, Hughes testified before the zoning hearing board and was questioned about newspaper reports that he was the target last month of a federal forfeiture complaint seeking to seize from him more than $750,000, Paluso and Benyak said. Hughes was accused of taking kickbacks from physicians through his Greensburg-based business, Universal Oral Fluid Laboratories, and he denied doing anything illegal in that case, the attorneys said.

Paluso said that testimony had no relevance to the issue before the zoning hearing board, which indicated it would render a decision in the case in two months.