Planners OK Therapy Center
10/30/2003
After six years of planning, Leg Up Farm is seeing a light at the end of the tunnel.
Issue: East Manchester Township Planning Commission unanimously agreed to recommend a subdivision plan to the township supervisors for Leg Up Farm, 4248 N. Sherman St. Extended.
Reaction: “It will be a first-of-its-kind therapy center in this country for kids with special needs,” said Lou Castriota, Jr., chairman of Leg Up Farm.
Background: Castriota and the board of directors are planning a center that will provide an individually tailored therapy program for children with special needs. Services offered will include horse, physical, psychological, occupational, music, aqua, art, speech and recreational therapies, Castriota said. Also, family support will be provided.
Castriota, who lives with his family in Shrewsbury Township, was motivated to develop a one-stop therapy facility for children with special needs after his daughter Brooke, who is seven, was diagnosed with mitochondrial disease about six years ago.
Since then, Barbara Warren agreed to allow the facility to be built on her East Manchester Township eco-farm, which provides wildlife habitat and affords opportunities for environmental and agricultural education.
Of the 188-acre farm that Warren owns, she has given 18.5 acres to Leg Up Farm. Of the 18.5 acres, only about eight acres will be developed and 10 acres will be left in its natural state, said Michael Takas of First Capital Engineering.
“We don’t want kids to feel like they are in school or hospital,” Castriota said. “We want kids to feel like they are at a farm.”
Children will not stay overnight at the farm. Instead, children will come for 45-minute therapy sessions. A child may attend one or several therapy sessions and could stay from between 1.5 hours to four or five hours, Castriota said. Insurance benefits would apply to the accredited therapies.
Also, the facility will offer recreational activities that the community can participate in. Meeting space will be provided for groups such as the Girl and Boy Scouts and Future Farmers of America so that children with disabilities can have access to them, he said.
Legislators from York County and Pennsylvania have been supportive of the project.
U.S. Rep. Todd Platts, R-York County, has requested that the House Appropriations subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services and Education set aside $1 million for the project. Sen. Arlen Specter and Rick Santorum are supporting this request for federal dollars, Castriota said.
“We haven’t hears anything yet,” Castriota said. “It’s the last piece of the federal budget.”
The project received a $60,000 grant from Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development. Other funds have been raised by donors and two golf tournaments that benefited the farm. The tournaments raised $75,000, Castriota said.
Gov. Ed Rendell has signed a bill for $4.56 million of Capital Redevelopment Assistance Funds to go toward the project. However, the money has not yet been released.
State Sen. Mike Waugh was instrumental in requested the money, Castriota said. Letters of support for the farm to get this state grant money have been sent by representatives Stan Saylor, Keith Gillespie, Stephen Stetler, Bruce Smith, Ron Miller, Bev Mackereth, and Steve Nichol.
Approval for a final land development plan for the farm is ready and will follow the subdivision plan approval process, Castriota said. Once Rendell releases the Capital Redevelopment Assistance Funds, groundbreaking could occur next year and 12 months later the doors would open, he said. For more information about Leg Up Farm, call 843-8341.
E. MANCHESTER TWP., The York Daily Record