The lawyer for one of Calgary's two methadone clinics, ordered to move from its northeast location and facing opposition from potential neighbours in its proposed new home, says the backlash could force the clinic out of the city.

"These people don't do it for money. It's a modest living for the doctors who participate. They do it out of care, more than any other reason," Hugh Ham, the lawyer for Second Chance Recovery centre, told CBC News on Thursday.

"They don't have a lot of money to spend on searching for buildings and planning consultants and lawyers, and fighting with community associations."

In a decision this week, the city gave the centre three months to move from the northeast Greenview Industrial Park, because the area isn't zoned for a medical clinic.

The Highland Park Community Association also complained to the city that residents were not properly consulted.

Now the clinic's operators are considering a second-storey space in the Riviera Plaza strip mall in the southeast community of Forest Lawn, but they face opposition there too.

"We generally have a great concern in compatibility of use. It would be just above a daycare, which I think is not necessarily the best location for it," Alison Karim-McSweeney, executive director of the International Avenue Business Association, said Wednesday.

"Another concern that I would have is he says he has 500 clients — that's an incredible amount of traffic."

The clinic provides methadone treatment to people trying to kick heroin and prescription drug addictions.

Clinic seeks support to stay open

Clients of the clinic told CBC News it will be difficult to adjust to a relocation.

"You've got your routes, and you've got your day planned and your routine, and when you have to rearrange that and change that and then it becomes unstable again," said one woman.

Karim-McSweeney said business owners in Forest Lawn are having doubts about supporting the clinic.

"They thought it was more like a walk-in type clinic.… I don't feel things were fully disclosed to them," she said.

The city has required the clinic to submit an application for a development permit within a month to prove its intention to move, and must get public input before it will be allowed to move to the strip mall.

June Postnikoff, a nurse at the clinic, said it's not the moving that she's worried about.

"The issue is not whether or not it's going to be in Forest Lawn. The issue is whether the clinic's going to stay open, and it can only stay open if we get some support."

Ham said the "not in my backyard" stance of politicians and community associations will hurt hundreds of recovering addicts. Calgary's only other methadone treatment centre, run by the Alberta Alcohol and Drug Abuse Commission, has a three-month waiting list.

Ham said Medicine Hat and Lethbridge have both shown interest in having the Second Chance Recovery clinic move there instead.