A for-profit detox and recovery center business interested in purchasing the former hospital building planned a site visit for this week, and a former Wrangell resident who now works as a company representative led them to it.
Casey Odell, the representative from Ft. Lauderdale, Florida-based Regard Recovery Centers, called in to the borough assembly meeting on Nov. 9 to discuss the possibility. She said she worked for Alaska Island Community Services as a therapist and health counselor in 2013 in Wrangell, before SEARHC took over the community’s health care services.
Borough Capital Facilities Director Amber Al-Haddad recalled speaking with Odell in jest about the possibility of the former hospital as a potential site for the recovery center, during a social setting while Odell was visiting Wrangell this past summer. Odell and Al-Haddad are friends from when Odell worked at AICS, Al-Haddad said, and Odell took the remark under consideration and requested a walk-through.
Odell said she left Wrangell in 2016 to pursue a career in New Mexico as clinical director at Shadow Mountain Recovery Center. Since then, she said she moved up to the position of regional director, overseeing all of the center’s programming.
The owner of Shadow Mountain was looking for investment groups interested in purchasing the recovery center, Odell said, and Regard Recovery Centers was one of those groups.
“When they were touring New Mexico, we struck up a relationship and have a shared vision for the needs of the recovery community in the United States," Odell said. “And we've since been pursuing those.”
This past spring, she said Regard Recovery Centers tapped her to start consulting with them on expanding their multi-state, multi-platform treatment network. Odell listed Florida, Kentucky, Tennessee, West Virginia, Pennsylvania and New Mexico as states the center already operates in, or is interested in going into.
“We would really like to expand into Alaska,” Odell said on the call to the assembly Nov. 9. “Wrangell is my home, so of course that would be a really great opportunity. As I was exploring the business development model, in looking around in Alaska, and discussing it with my social network, my friends, my community members, Amber Al-Haddad made me aware that the old hospital in Wrangell was sitting unused. And it really would be an ideal location for what Regard Recovery (Centers) is proposing starting in Alaska.”
Regard Recovery Centers is interested in building a substance abuse detox residential PHP (partial hospitalization program) and IOP (intensive outpatient program) recovery hub, Odell told the assembly, which could stimulate the economy and provide jobs. And, she said, it would use a facility that has been vacant since SEARHC moved into its new medical center earlier this year.
While Odell said it’s premature to speculate on the number of beds, she said a center in Wrangell “could be a good hub for people in Southeast Alaska who probably have to go to Seattle or Anchorage to get that level of care.”
She concurred with Al-Haddad’s estimate that Regard Recovery Centers could create 75 or more jobs by opening a center in Wrangell, and the domino effect on the economy could reach beyond that number. “That certainly is our hope,” Odell said.
“We have this large, 30,000-square-foot building that’s been sitting empty for nearly nine months now,” Al-Haddad said. “The borough has had it in the forefront of our minds since before it became vacant, as to what we would do once SEARHC vacated it. We haven’t yet come up with a plan. Until we have a plan, we have to keep that building viable to ensure that if there is future use of it, that it’s in good condition.”
Keeping it viable means spending $100,000 a year to keep the vacant building heated, have staff go check on it, and pay insurance on the building, Al-Haddad said.
Regard Recovery Centers would relieve the borough of that cost, and the building could be added to the property tax roll.
Economic Development Director Carol Rushmore told the assembly the borough has been working with Regard Recovery Centers.
“They have contacted the borough,” Rushmore said. “They have been requesting information. Staff have been working with them to try to get them as much information as possible to help them with their due diligence. So from our conversations with them, they are doing due diligence on the property to make it work and we’re just trying to see the processes of what would happen so when they do submit a formal proposal, we know the route, what it would look like for the borough.”
Odell said she worked with her colleagues to plan a site visit this week, and part of her intention of being in town is to talk with people who live here, and have Wrangell be an ally in the process, she said.
“I view this as an opportunity for the community,” Odell said. “Not just because it brings jobs or a new workforce. I feel that Wrangell, in several different instances, has set itself up to be a leader in health care services. It would be a continuation of that legacy.”
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