The owner of a Mediterranean-style luxury hotel near Bodega wants to convert the place to a residential treatment facility for people trying to kick their dependence on pain medication.
"There's a big need," said Perry Litchfield, a San Rafael businessman who bought the 60-acre Sonoma Coast Villa & Spa three years ago with an eye on such a conversion.
Dependence on physician-prescribed narcotics is "becoming worse and worse" among people who get hooked, often while recovering from surgery or injury, said Litchfield, a licensed attorney, general contractor and real estate broker, as well as a certified chemical dependency counselor.
For Litchfield, a 57-year-old recovering alcoholic, there's also a personal element to the project, based on the pay-it-forward principle included in the Alcoholics Anonymous 12-step program.
The 12th step says: "Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs."
To Litchfield, that means "by helping others to achieve sobriety you will keep your own."
The 18-room inn with red tile roofs and stucco walls in the countryside along Highway 1 might seem an unusual setting for the purpose, but Litchfield said it will provide an upscale clientele the "setting they are accustomed to."
The facility will cater to professionals — business executives, lawyers, doctors, pilots "and the occasional celebrity" — as well as middle-class patients, he said.
A rural retreat since 1982, the villa has hosted John Travolta and Robert Duvall. Rates range from $155 to $325 per night for rooms and suites with fireplaces, radiant floor heating and jetted tubs.
"You shouldn't have to lower your standards to get help," Litchfield said.
The Sonoma County Board of Zoning Adjustments approved Litchfield's request for a permit to operate a 32-bed residential care facility in November, but an appeal filed by two Petaluma residents will put the matter before the Board of Supervisors.
Al and Joe Bordessa filed the appeal, challenging the compatibility of a residential care facility with its rural setting.
Even if the clients are intended to be wealthy and the facility will have strict rules, the appeal said: "These are not measures that can be made operational and become part of the project condition."
Joe Bordessa could not be reached for comment on Friday.
Litchfield opened a treatment facility called Bayside Marin in San Rafael in 2004, including a chronic pain treatment program. He sold it in 2007 to CRC Health Group, a subsidiary of Bain Capital, with the provision that he stay out of the treatment industry for five years.
Treating patients who need to get off opiates and find alternatives to pain management, such as acupuncture, biofeedback and physical therapy, will be the focus of the new facility.
Litchfield said he had hoped to open by mid-summer, but doesn't know how long it will take to get the appeal before the supervisors and obtain a state license.
Litchfield said he bought the foreclosed hotel from a bank and retained the former owners, Johannes and Ingrid Zachbauer, as operators pending the conversion to a treatment facility.
(You can reach Staff Writer Guy Kovner at 521-5457 or guy.kovner@pressdemocrat.com.)
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