County supervisors voted Tuesday to seek a construction manager to renovate a former 120-bed treatment facility in National City nearly 18 months after the county acquired it.
The building has sat vacant since the county took it over in late December 2022 despite an overdose epidemic and local substance use treatment providers’ struggles to deliver more residential treatment beds elsewhere. The demand for treatment beds is expected to only increase when the county implements a conservatorship expansion law early next year.
How we got here: The county took over the former Volunteers of America facility as part of a settlement deal after county auditors found the former county contractor was misusing funds and couldn’t account for much of its spending.
Before VOA handed over the property, county officials expected to invest about $1 million into the building and then-supervisor Nathan Fletcher said the county could likely quickly reopen it as a substance use treatment facility since it was already zoned for that purpose.
Status update: County officials asked supervisors to vote to allow them to move forward with seeking a construction manager for a $26 million renovation that will eventually allow them to provide an “array” of yet-to-be-specified substance use treatment services at the site. In a staff report, county officials wrote that if supervisors sign off, they’d expect construction to begin in April 2025 and to conclude in 2026.
Why the hold up? County spokesperson Tim McClain told Voice of San Diego that the county was “actively developing a plan to renovate this property, beginning more than a year ago by awarding a contract for the design phase.”
The site remained vacant in the interim, McClain wrote, “because it has required extensive planning and coordination and will need significant renovations to successfully operationalize services” though the county may potentially use the site for substance use treatment services later this year.
This post has been updated.
