Recorder Staff

PETERSHAM —The North Quabbin region will soon have its own substance abuse and mental health rehabilitation facility with an 86-bed capacity and multiple stages and types of care under one roof, where previously the region had little or nothing. 
“We also have an apple orchard,” said Rebecca Bialecki, Heywood Healthcare’s vice president for community health, as she showed off the space recently. 
The rural setting and space for gardening and outdoor programs were part of the property’s attraction. Bialecki said there is something to be said for a “geographical cure,” removing patients from familiar and dangerous surroundings. 
Bialecki came to Heywood as a member of the former Athol Memorial Hospital during their recent merger, and for years headed the North Quabbin Community Coalition. In that capacity, she helped confront the growing opioid crisis, the ever-present alcohol problem and the lack of services locally.
Planning the Quabbin Retreat at 211 North Main St., she said, was a dream come true.
“This is a chance for this community, meaning the North Quabbin, to take one of our biggest challenges and make it one of our biggest strengths,” Bialecki said.
Planning began four years ago, she said, with the realization that behavioral health was one of the region’s biggest challenges and that outside help wasn’t coming.
In 2015, Heywood Healthcare bought the 75,000-square-foot building and its 21 acres along with an additional 61 acres to protect against the intrusion of any future development in the rural campus’ backyard. 
Bialecki said plans include an invitation to Seeds of Solidarity to bring their therapeutic gardening program to the campus, as well as yoga, art therapy and other elements of what Bialecki said is a holistic approach. 
The plans call for 36 adult beds, up to 30 beds for adolescents, and privacy for men, women and pre-operation transgendered people. An upstairs library is to become a tutoring room to keep adolescents caught up with school when they return. 
Mental health treatment is to be offered in the same building as substance abuse treatment, allowing a smooth transition if staff should determine one or the other to be the underlying cause, as Bialecki said often happens.
The core of the building is a circa-1920s mansion owned at one time by the family of silver screen star Bette Davis. The bulk of the facility was built in 1967 and at one time housed 86 nuns, now the occupancy limit. Bialecki said that the nuns were pristine caretakers, with the building ahead of its time and perfectly preserved. The four nuns remaining at the time of the sale have moved to Marlboro, and all offered to volunteer when the retreat opens, Bialecki said. Amenities include a full commercial kitchen, laundry room, working heating system, bathrooms and dormitory rooms. 
“The bones are really designed for exactly what we wanted,” she said. 
Major work to be done includes replacing floors throughout to remove asbestos mastic and gutting and remodeling of the third and top floors into two secure adult inpatient units. 
The $14 million facility is to open in stages, beginning in August with outpatient treatment, a partial day program and adult residential addiction treatment. Adolescent residential addiction treatment is to come in late 2017 as phase two, followed by adult inpatient, mental health and detox beds in late 2018.