BROOKINGS — The planned expansion of the Ivy Center, which houses Brookings Behavioral Health & Wellness, is still on track, but its cost has gone up and its completion date has been pushed back.

“Our original project cost was $3.6 million. That was a pretty basic estimate based on the number of square feet that we were looking to increase and so it was kind of a standard calculation for price per square foot of construction and product cost at that time,” Executive Director Mary Beth Fishback explained in an interview with the Brookings Register. “We have seen a significant increase in construction costs and cost of materials, so we’re now looking at an estimated total project cost of about $5.5 million.”

The new circumstances are discouraging, yes, but hold on a moment, because the news is about to get better: A community development block grant worth up to $2 million is being sought alongside the initiation of a previously planned $1.2 million private capital campaign. All of this is on top of the $2.4 million in American Rescue Plan Act money that the project received last year from the Brookings City Council and Brookings County Commission. 

“That’s a great opportunity for our agency to access some additional funding to help with this project,” Fishback said of the block grant. “A year or so ago we got approved by both the city and the county for $1.2 million each, which is an enormous kickstart for our project. With the increasing project cost now up to $5.5 million, having additional funding available is going to make it a lot easier for us to undertake and successfully complete this project.”

She said the final application due date was Oct. 1, and that it will be followed by a review/award process. She thinks it’ll be around the first of January before there’s notification and the agency is able to move forward with whatever dollar amount is awarded.

Project details

The project will expand the Ivy Center at 211 Fourth St. from a 6,000-square-foot building into an almost 20,000-square-foot complex. It will provide room for more services and additional staffers — both important during a time when the Brookings area’s need for mental health and substance abuse services has increased. 

“The final footprint of the roughly 20,000-square-foot (will) be individual offices and group space, and we would be able to house 45 staff in that building,” Fishback said. “It allows us to not only cover our current need, but growth into the future, which was part of the plan as well.”

The expansion, which is now set to break ground this coming spring and wrap up in fall 2025, can’t come soon enough. Why? Well, staffing and office conditions are kind of cramped in the Ivy Center. Actually, more than cramped.

“In the current building, utilizing every square inch of space, we have 20 offices — so I’ve got 31 staff in 20 offices in our current building,” Fishback explained.

She pointed out that there’s a lot of office sharing going on, and said sharing includes herself, as she doesn’t have an office to call her own.

“We’re having to schedule things a little bit differently, we’re moving clinicians around to different offices, so they’re taking their clients into different offices each time they come, which is certainly not ideal,” Fishback said.

Satellite office 

Fishback said because the project is going to take some time, Brookings Behavioral Health & Wellness is adding a satellite location at 629 Fifth Ave., the old Dakota Abstract building.

“We will have to split up our staff for the remainder of this project until we have it finalized just because we continue to see the need for increasing our staff to meet the community’s need for services,” she said. “The way we’re operating right not is not sustainable, even in the short term to get this building project done, so we are going to lease additional space that will house part of our staff and part of our services until the final build is complete.”

The satellite location will open sometime later in October, and is expected to initially house five staffers.

While Fishback is juggling numerous priorities, she certainly hasn’t forgotten that the block grant funding isn’t guaranteed — but there’s a plan for that, too.

“All along we have — we as in our agency and our board of directors — have made a commitment to do individual and business fundraising. We’re going to do a capital campaign alongside of the funding we’ve already received from the city and the county. That still stands,” Fishback said.

“The (CDBG) was something that we became aware of after we were already in this process, so it’s a nice bonus for some funds that are desperately needed,” she continued. “It would make that fundraising campaign go a lot smoother, it would make it little bit easier to raise our total project costs, but there will still need to be a capital campaign that runs alongside of this in terms of individual and business giving.”

The private capital campaign is still in its infancy, but there’s good reasons for that.

“It’s something our agency and our board has … we’ve spent a lot time thinking through this process for our agency, wanting to make sure that we’re hitting a certain point in terms of architectural and schematic design so that we have solid information to show people when we’re out there asking for money,” Fishback said. 

Staff growth

While quarters are beyond tight in the Ivy Center, Fishback said she still hopes to add another two or three staffers yet this year to the current 31-person roster. It’s a necessary task because of the community’s needs, but it also requires careful consideration.

“We’re trying to balance that with the need for services and the space that we have available,” she said. “It’s really kind of a balancing act in how we do that until the (project is done). We are still actively hiring staff — again mainly because there’s such a huge need for services in our community, and we’re doing our best to respond to that need and that requires a staff to do it as well.”

That the cramped conditions are a pain for staffers isn’t something they would necessarily focus on because, Fishback said, patients always come first for them.

“When you ask the staff their first thought about our building challenges, they’re not going to tell you, ‘Well, I don’t have a break room’ or ‘We don’t have a meeting space.’ They’re going to tell you the impact that they see on their clients, because that’s their first concern,” she said. “… They know it’s hard on their clients when they have someone who struggles with social anxiety and they’re checking into a waiting room where it’s standing room only and you’re elbow-to-elbow with people. That’s incredibly stressful for an individual.”

Fishback cited other examples as well.

“When we have people who thrive on structure and consistency, when they’re having to be taken to a different office every single time they come to our building, it doesn’t set the right therapeutic environment for that individual and for that service,” she said. “We’ve had concerns over soundproofing or lack thereof in our building, so in making sure that we’re able to provide a safe and comfortable and confidential space for people to come is a huge challenge, and that will be the first thing that my staff say if you ask them the biggest challenges that they face with the building. It’s not about them, it’s about how it’s impacting our clients.”

Even though her staffers won’t focus on how the conditions are affecting them, Fishback relayed some of the effects and their ramifications.

“Working in mental health is a challenging role, right? So we see a lot of burnout just simply because it’s a difficult job — caring for other people in any capacity is a difficult job,” Fishback noted. “We add on top of that some challenges because of our building limitations that make it a lot harder on our staff.

“For example, to create an additional office, I did cut, in more than half, our breakroom. So I have a very small breakroom available for our staff, which means they can’t go in there over lunch and decompress and share a meal together,” she said. “They’re in their own offices or they leave the building because there’s no space for them to gather. We don’t have space for our full staff, other than standing room only, to all be together at once for a staff meeting.” 

Neighbors 

Not forgotten in all of this — a cramped building, client concerns, staffing worries, fundraising and the block grant application — is the neighborhood that the Ivy Center calls home. 

“We are coming up on first and second readings at the City Council as we move through some of the approval process for zoning and building design and plans,” Fishback said. “We want the community to be involved, we want to hear people’s thoughts — particularly neighbors. We very much want to be good neighbors in this process and make sure that the way we’re thinking about design for the building is going to enhance the neighborhood and not take away from it.”

She continued, “We want to make sure that the scale of things fits within the existing neighborhood structure. Any comments that the community has as related to space and what people see as a need would be important to have in a building like ours would certainly be valid information and something that we want to hear. So, having community involvement in this is, I think, always helpful.” 

In parting, Fishback emphasized that Brookings Behavioral Health & Wellness has set its bar high when it comes to helping the community and its surrounding environs. There’s no cutting corners here.

“Our overall goal and mission with this agency is to provide quality, caring services to our community in a way that is welcoming to anyone and everyone that needs help,” she said. “Right now, what we’re facing with our building is that it’s really limiting us in our ability to provide that service in the way that we want to do it, the way that our community deserves to have mental health and substance abuse services provided.”

She finished, “This building project is really an extension of us trying to serve out our mission. It’s helping us to create the infrastructure that we need to provide that safe, quality caring support for individuals that need our help.”

— Contact Mondell Keck at mkeck@brookingsregister.com.