EPCAL to be site of 80-bed, multimillion-dollar substance abuse treatment center
The planned Wellbridge Residential Substance-Abuse Treatment Campus, designed by BBS Architects, Landscape Architects and Engineers, will be built on 40 acres in Calverton. The $90 million,134,000-square-foot project will include six buildings, with a mix of research facilities and residential accommodations. Credit: The Engel Burman Group
The Riverhead Town Board has approved a site plan for a multimillion-dollar, 80-bed substance abuse treatment and research facility at the Enterprise Park at Calverton that officials project will be up and running in 2020.
The 134,000-square-foot Wellbridge center will consist of six buildings and will focus on treating people struggling with opioid and other substance abuse, as well as research studying addiction and treatment. It was originally to be called the Peconic Care Research, Recovery and Rehabilitation Center, but the name was changed for copyright reasons. The town board approved the site plan at a July 26 work session.
Construction will begin within the next several days, according to Andrew Drazan, CEO at Wellbridge, and is projected to finish around December 2019. He said Wednesday that the facility had been “a long time coming” and that the focus is to “make this an epicenter for addiction study.”
“The treatment is everything,” Drazan said. “You can build a beautiful facility, but it all comes down to getting people well. So we have to find patients, and the focus will be on treating them as individuals.”
The facility will employ up to 90 staff members, according to project officials, and will house a 6,000-square-foot research pavilion, wellness center, detoxification facility, primary-care section, short-term care building and an auditorium, among other features.
There will be 80 beds onsite for people being treated — 20 detox beds in a medically stabilized unit, 40 residential treatment beds for patients staying an average of 30 days, and 20 beds for those staying for extended aftercare — the total could go up to a maximum of 130 beds if there is a proven need or demand, Drazan said.
The opioid crisis has generated public forums and task forces in East End communities such as Southampton. Toxicology tests confirmed that opioid overdoses killed 421 people in Nassau and Suffolk counties in 2017, according to an earlier Newsday story.
Data from addiction research will be used over time to seek federal funding for more extensive addiction studies, project officials said.
Riverhead Supervisor Laura Jens-Smith said July 25 in a statement that the facility “will not only provide badly needed recovery services but, through their commitment to research, will work to learn more about stopping this deadly trend.”
Out East with Doug Geed: Wine harvests, a fish market, baked treats and poinsettias NewsdayTV's Doug Geed visits two wineries and a fish market, and then it's time for holiday cheer, with a visit to a bakery and poinsettia greenhouses.
Out East with Doug Geed: Wine harvests, a fish market, baked treats and poinsettias NewsdayTV's Doug Geed visits two wineries and a fish market, and then it's time for holiday cheer, with a visit to a bakery and poinsettia greenhouses.
