What To Know About Granite Ridge Recovery In St. Cloud [AUDIO]

ST. CLOUD (WJON News) -- After an $8 million renovation, a church that has been vacant for nearly 15 years is ready for its new life.

The former First United Methodist Church at 302 5th Avenue South in St. Cloud is the new Granite Ridge Recovery Center.

The owners are Nelson Development, which partners with Ascension Recovery Services.

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Director of Development Brian Schall says half of the building will be dedicated to outpatient services.

Partial hospitalization and intensive outpatient, as well as if an individual just needs to meet with a counselor, we'll have counselors for both mental health and substance use, and we'll have peer recovery coaches.

The other half of the building will be residential inpatient services with 48 beds in rooms on three floors.

Our average length of stay will be 28 days. We'll get contracted with all of the payers. Individuals oftentimes get referred by family members or friends when they need treatment for drugs and alcohol. We also get a lot of referrals from hospitals and employers, and honestly, a lot of word of mouth.

Everyone who gets admitted will be assigned a case manager to help them on their road to recovery.

When someone comes in through an admission, we'll immediately start figuring out what the discharge plan is to make sure that the individual has the right place to go live. If they need a sober living option, we'll get them set up outpatient, we have that here, and we'll set them up with a recovery group like AA or NA.

This is Nelson Development's seventh recovery center; most are in Iowa and Indiana; this is the first in Minnesota. They are also working on another new facility, which will be in Long Prairie.

Schall says rates of drug and alcohol addiction have skyrocketed.

Especially since COVID and the opioid epidemic. Over 54 million Americans suffer from substance use disorder. We've been starting to see more individuals seek treatment than historically. So, there's a huge need, and Minnesota has always been on our list of markets to go into.

Schall says they are hoping to get their state license by the end of this year and start operating in the first quarter of next year.

Once they are up and running, Granite Ridge Recovery Center will employ over 30 full-time employees. It will be staffed 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

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