Those who've been working to establish a residential alcohol and drug addiction treatment center on property near Capital High School are seeking public and private funding for an outpatient care and education center as part of the project.
Jim Bennett - who provides counseling for the Kanawha Valley Fellowship Home, the alcohol and drug abuse recovery nonprofit group of which the new "T-Center" project would be part - said the outpatient facility could serve 120 to 150 people at a time in abstinence-based, 12-step programs, which generally involve a "higher power" of the participant's choosing but can be for nonreligious people as well.
Those programs often last three months, although Bennett said some people might attend daily for a single month rather than several nights a week over a longer time. In all, he said, the center could serve 600 people a year.
Kanawha County Commissioner Dave Hardy said plans include allowing judges to refer people to the facility.
"They're looking for an option, they want to have the ability to send a young person, maybe a first-time offender, to this outpatient clinic," Hardy said. He said about three-fourths of nonviolent offenders get in trouble due to drugs and alcohol.
West Virginia has the nation's highest drug overdose death rate, more than double the national average, according to a June report from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Trust for America's Health.
Scott Miller, chairman of the T-Center's board, said outpatient services have been envisioned all along for the facility.
Unlike the male-only Fellowship Home, Bennett said the facility would be for both men and women, have designated groups for different age ranges and perhaps even have "licensed professional groups" dedicated to, for instance, lawyers or doctors who are themselves struggling with addiction. Plans for the building would also include a 150-seat auditorium for providing anti-drug education to kids, which Bennett said would have a separate entrance from the outpatient side of the facility.
He noted the name of the T-Center facilities could possibly change to be dubbed after donors.
The education and outpatient facility would be located on the same property as the residential center, but would be separate from the residential building - no more than a half-mile away, Miller said. Like the original concept, he said it wouldn't be visible, or would be barely visible, from the high school.
Bennett said the center would help provide anti-drug education to students in every county through designating the largest school in each area as a hub for such programs, with a focus on starting the education before kids reach 10 years old. Miller - also a former board member of the Fellowship Home and president of private aviation company Executive Air - said the education programs from the T-Center facility could be recorded or live-streamed online to enter classrooms across the state.
Miller said the 10,000-square-foot building is expected to cost $5.1 million, atop the now $12 million estimated cost of the 48-bed, over 30,000-square-foot residential facility concept. He said he hopes to have the education and outpatient center open by the end of next year or the beginning of 2017 and the inpatient piece open about two years afterward.
Miller and other proponents of the project, who met with the Gazette-Mail Monday, said they're planning on adding - as a third phase and possibly not at the site near Capital - "after care" housing for people who complete the inpatient program but want to continue to live among other sober individuals and receive counseling. As a possible fourth phase, Dave Wallace - an emeritus Fellowship Home board member and a member since 1936 of First Presbyterian Church, of which Fellowship Home is a part - said there could be a treatment facility for prisoners, but added that wouldn't be located on the site near Capital.
Hardy said proponents of the center started changing their vision of the project a year ago to add the education and outpatient facet.
"As we started seeing more and more heroin overdoses and opioids and all this other stuff, prescription overdoses ... We started thinking, 'Guys, we've got to get to the root cause of this,'" Miller added.
Miller said proponents are meeting with the state Department of Health and Human Resources and the governor this week to try to get state funding for the project, in part to allow people who can't afford the outpatient services to receive them anyway. The project is also seeking federal funds.
They didn't have a firm number available Monday on how much money they've already raised, but Miller said over $1 million has already been put into this project, if one includes the value of people's time invested in the project. Hardy said, among the groups and companies that have provided assistance for no charge, Charleston-based Silling Associates provided design drawings, and the Charleston Area Alliance has provided a grant writer. The Kanawha County Commission has given $50,000, the Fellowship Home has put forth about $300,000 and Charleston Mayor Danny Jones said the city will provide money, probably through the city's next fiscal year budget.
The T-Center project generated controversy over its proposed location last year after the Kanawha County school board voted 4-0 - with Pete Thaw abstaining, saying his son worked on the project - to donate to the center about 50 acres of land it owned across W.Va. 114 from Capital. Board members defended the move, saying there would be no threat to students.
In January, Charleston City Council voted 26-1 to approve rezoning the area as a professional medical campus; Adam Knauff, the councilman who said he voted against the rezoning as a way to protest the school board's handling of the situation, was defeated in the May council elections.
"It is not something that's opened where somebody who's in trouble can be sent," at-large Councilwoman Mary Jean Davis said of the project at that meeting.
Davis said Monday that the outpatient services inclusion would not affect her support, though she said she hasn't heard an update on the concept since the rezoning vote.
"I think that any facility in West Virginia, in Charleston, to help with the drug issues that we have would be nothing but beneficial," she said.
Kanawha school board members Robin Rector and Ryan White said Monday they'd have to learn more about the outpatient component, which they were unfamiliar with, before saying whether it would impact their support.
To donate to the project, you can send checks to the T-Center's postal address at 400 Eagle Mountain Road, Charleston, WV, 25311, with attention to Scott Miller, or call Miller at 304-549-7518.
Reach Ryan Quinn at ryan.quinn@wvgazettemail.com, facebook.com/ryanedwinquinn, 304-348-1254 or follow @RyanEQuinn on Twitter.