About the Project

Trillium Heath Resources is a local government agency (LME/MCO) that manages mental health, substance use, and intellectual/developmental disability services in twenty-five counties in Eastern North Carolina. As such, they initially teamed with New Hanover County to bring innovative, peer-based, recovery-oriented services to homeless and underserved individuals in eastern North Carolina by selling the County the property to construct a new facility for substance use recovery. Although almost 80,000 individuals in eastern North Carolina have an alcohol or other drug addiction problem, there were (in 2019) zero long-term residential facilities for substance use disorders in the region.

The new facilities alleviate that problem and incorporate long-term recovery principals developed by The Healing Place of Louisville, Kentucky. The Healing Place provides underserved adults who live with alcohol and other drug addictions with a program to restore them to a healthy life through the following offerings on this site:

• Two overnight emergency shelters – one for 7 women and one for 7 men.
• Housing for clients in recovery providing incremental increases in privacy and personal space as one progresses through the program. This will consist of group housing as well as two-person sleeping accommodations of varying configurations located in a hierarchical progression.
• A full service dining facility capable of preparing and serving three meals per day that seats clients in two shifts per meal.
• A 24 hour social setting detox facility with 14 beds per gender with an adjacent infirmary that only operates several hours daily to serve client needs.
• Educational facilities for clients in the form of a multi-purpose meeting room and two large classrooms.

The facility consists of five single-level buildings gathered around a central, communal courtyard providing services to up to 100 men and 100 women in recovery. The site also offers the opportunity for future expansion should the need become compelling. The five buildings are as follows:

• An Administrative / Educational Building housing the facility administrative offices as well as classrooms, space for peer mentoring, and client recovery planning operations. This building also provides a liaison to the public by providing meeting space for use by organizations in the evening with a similar mission such as Alcoholics and Narcotics Anonymous.

16,863 ft.²

• A Dining / Shelter / Storage Building with 14 overnight shelter beds and 37 program client beds per gender for the initial phases of recovery. This building also includes the facility cafeteria and dining area seating approximately 110 persons per seating. Storage is also provided for donated goods including a large walk-in cooler/freezer to accommodate food donations from the local community.

19,999 ft.²

• Two Residential Buildings (one for men & one for women) providing the more private 2-person rooms for later stages of recovery.

9,388 ft.² for Women

9,248 ft.² for Men

• A Detox / Clinic Building with 14 beds per gender in two separate social setting detox suites as well as an adjacent medical clinic to deal with periodic medical needs of the facility clients.

6,289 ft.²

The completed facility was occupied in the winter of 2023.