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Politics & Government

Parrot Mill Inn To Be Converted Into Gambling Addiction Clinic

Historic site will be leased.

The Parrot Mill Inn will close in the next couple of months and reopen as a gambling addiction clinic.

At a meeting Wednesday, the borough Planning Board unanimously approved the application of Michael Osborne, owner of Tricare Treatment Services, to provide counseling, mental health sessions and overnight accommodations to gaming addicted individuals at the historic site.

The clinic will be called "Tricare at the Parrot Mill Inn." Officials said the details of the group's lease of the building will be finalized in the next few months.

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Osborne, a gambling behavioral therapist—a title he acknowledged was unregulated—told the board his facility would be the nation's first addiction clinic devoted to gambling.

No physical changes will be made to the dwelling at 47 Main St., which was built in the late 18th century.

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The approval will allow Osborne to lease the site for three years with an option to eventually purchase it. The present owner is Betsy Kennedy, who opened the bed and breakfast in 1986 with her then-husband, Frank, who died in 1990. Betsy Kennedy has run the business since then.

Her son, Toby Kennedy, would not comment after the meeting. 

Osborne said his clients will include Wall Street bankers, doctors, attorneys and professional athletes. He said he plans overnight accomodations for four to six patients.   

"These people are typically high-profile, white-collar individuals," Osborne said during the meeting. "Their anonymity is 100 percent most important to them because of the repercussions it would have if it was disclosed they were being treated for gaming addiction."

Planning Board Attorney Anne Marie Rizzuto indicated at the meeting's outset that the hearing was on a proposed change of permitted use with a request for a site plan waiver.

The proposed change of permitted use was concerned with the overnight accommodations of patients. The site plan waiver dealt with changing bedrooms into offices—something Osborne would like to do when he gains ownership of the building.

Barry Osmun, an attorney representing Osborne, told the board that the inn's use of overnight accommodations had been "grandfathered in" from a time without restrictions.

"What this application contemplates is very similar to what the Parrot Mill Inn did," Osmun said.

Osmun also said the location was zoned for professional offices.

"The operation of Tricare will involve licensed councilors, psychiatrists and social workers," he said. "I respectfully submit that this is a permitted use."

Osborne said his clients would remain at the clinic for five weeks and be allowed family visits after three weeks. He said it was his experience that gaming patients usually remain indoors to protect their identities.

He told the board that he had previously been the director of the Michael D. Osborne Center for Problem Gambling in Baltimore. He said his Baltimore center closed when he lost his lease there. He then came to New Jersey to be closer to his girlfriend.

Rizzuto said she struggled with her decision to approve the application.

"A bed and breakfast is typically for honeymooners or people staying for three or four days. This is a long-term stay," she said. "But qualitatively, the inn's services are not changed. It's not a group home."

Rizzuto said she would allow the waiver of the site plan because the interior or exterior was not being altered.

The application was accepted pending a survey of parking spaces and signage approval. The planning board also said the new building will be limited to gambling-addicted individuals.

The Chatham Historical Preservation Manual indicates the Parrot Mill Inn may have been moved to its present location to replace a burned structure. The present house was listed in 1887 as belonging to George Parrot, Chatham 's last miller.

"In 1970, Ruth and Arthur Pearson opened the Stoneleigh Motel. In 1986 it was purchased by Frank Kennedy and renamed it The Parrot Mill Inn," the manual says. "Architecturally, the house is one of the most impressive survivors of the gambrel-roofed Federal dwelling that began being built in Chatham, Madison and Morristown at the turn of the 18th century. Its significance is diluted only by the obtrusive east wings."    

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