Portsmouth health agency awaits the fate of older building

PORTSMOUTH

Women visit to recover from their addictions. Others come to receive counseling and medication.

The Behavioral Healthcare Services staff has been serving an increasing number of clients in the Professional Building on Washington Street, where the agency has leased space for more than 20 years.

Their offices are showing their age.

There are creaky elevators and frosted glass. Hallways are crowded with file cabinets for a growing number of clients.

"It's old; it's dilapidated; it's scary for mental health clients going in there," said Cathy Revell, who chairs the Behavioral Healthcare Services advisory board.

Earlier this month, she and former City Manager C.W. "Luke" McCoy urged the City Council to do something about the facility.

"It is absolutely deplorable," McCoy said.

Two months before McCoy left his post in 2004, the city approved plans to construct a building for the services. The city leases space at three sites - at the Professional Building, at Port Centre Commerce Park, and on Dinwiddie Street - to house the department's mental health services and administration.

The department owns a fourth facility for mentally ill people on the corner of High Street and Jamestown Avenue.

The new building was envisioned as being a part of a human services campus that would allow clients to receive mental health treatment and social services help.

The 30,000-foot structure was supposed to be constructed in the 1700 block of High Street, next to the Department of Social Services.

In 2004, the city borrowed nearly $4.7 million to finance the project.

Over the next two years, Behavioral Healthcare Services attempted unsuccessfully to secure additional funding for the project from the General Assembly.

By 2007, the architect said it would cost $7.5 million for 32,000 square feet.

Earlier this year, The Virginian-Pilot reported that the city was paying back its loan for the facility, which never got built, with interest.

Now the city has $2.4 million less than it would need for the project, Revell said.

City Manager Kenneth Chandler, who came to Portsmouth last year, has not included the project in the city's proposed five-year capital plan.

Until she learned about the city's budget problems, Revell thought plans were going forward.

"Everything kind of came to a grinding halt," Revell said.

The 55-person department serves between 4,000 to 5,000 clients per year in its offices and in the community, Park said.

It's not the optimum, but I think people do what they have to do to deliver the services," agency director William Park said.

City leaders are currently looking at the Behavioral Healthcare Services' existing and future needs for space, Portsmouth spokeswoman Monique Bass wrote in an e-mail Friday.

The city is also reviewing the department's current leases and whether any nearby buildings could accommodate its staff and services, Bass said.

Jen McCaffery, (757) 446-2627, jen.mccaffery@pilotonline.com