It’s like a flashback from the ‘60s, but this time with neatly trimmed hair and button-down clothes.

Followers of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, guru to the Beatles and a generation of no-longer-young Americans, want to build a Vedic education center on a 10-acre site on North Madison Avenue to train practitioners and offer treatments to guests.

“Vedic techniques are a really ancient tradition, part of what we would call alternative medicine,” said island architect Michael Huddleston, who has been commissioned to design the center.

While plans are still in the early conceptual stages, Huddleston said the preliminary target is a 40-room facility in one or more buildings totalling some 20,000 square feet.

The proposed site is on the east side of Madison, opposite Eric Avenue and just south of Wilkes Elementary School. Huddleston said the proponents have an option on the property, but will not complete the purchase until the facility gains city approval.

The proposal doesn’t sit well with the neighbors, about 65 of whom showed up Monday at a community-outreach meeting.

“Every single person that showed up was unhappy,” said Paul Ziakin, an Eric Avenue resident. “With the traffic, trucks, deliveries and lights, its totally inappropriate for a residential neighborhood.”

Classified as an educational and health-care facility, the project would require a conditional use permit, said city planner Joshua Machen. The Bainbridge Island City Council must approve CUPs.

Buildings would be in a Northwest style, Huddleston said, and would be be screened from the road both by vegetation and the terrain.

Candace Badgett, who owns a similar facility in Fairfield, Iowa, and who would manage the Bainbridge facility, said the island is a perfect spot for the meditation-centered stress relief of Vedic health-care.

“I wanted a facility in Seattle, and looked all around the area,” she said. “When I ended up on Bainbridge Island, I said ‘this is it.’

“You get on that ferry and all of Seattle fades into the background – all the stress and the worry. But it’s still only 30 minutes away,” she said.

The center would treat what she calls “chronic diseases” like arthritis, fibromyalgia and headaches.

“We don’t deal with things like AIDs or cancer,” she said, “but our approach can make enormous headway. Conditions related to stress are our specialty.”

Best known for promoting Transcendental Meditation, the Maharishi was a driving force behind the revival of Ayurvedic health care, traditional Indian techniques that followers say became corrupted during the British occupation of India.

Treatments are based on a vegetarian diet, meditation, various non-invasive therapies and “cleansings” of the digestive system.

The Iowa facility, called The Raj, is considered one of the Midwest’s best spas, according to a recent article in a Minneapolis newspaper. And it is priced accordingly – a three-day program costs $1,800.

Huddleston said traffic and noise impacts would be slight because meals will be served at the facility, stays will be lengthy and guests will arrive and leave by shuttle car.

“Four single-family homes would create more traffic,” he said. “This is much more like a retreat or a spa than a traditional medical facility.”

The land is zoned at the island’s lowest residential density of one home per two-and-a-half acres. Educational and health-care facilities are permitted as conditional uses in that zone.

The neighbors do not buy the comparison.

“They’re trying to tell us that a 40-unit medical facility would have less impact than four homes,” Ziakin said. “Forty rooms means 40 toilets, compared to 12 at most in the homes, and that land is right over the aquifer for the area. They would need some sort of sewage-treatment plant.

“I think they may have done more harm than good by brushing off the neighbors’ questions, saying it’s no big deal.”

Neighborhood opponents have put up a website at www23.brinkster.com/nwusers, and have an email address, bimadisonave@hotmail.com. They are planning an organizational meeting for next week.

Ziakin said the neighbors want to keep their opposition focused on issues of noise and traffic, but he admitted he had personal concerns about the planned program.

“I’ve looked at that group’s websites, and it’s pretty far out if you ask me,” he said. “We’d rather see homes over there with families, kids and dogs.”