MORGANTOWN — Milan Puskar Health Right’s Friendship House is moving out of downtown Morgantown and refocusing on its original mission to be a safe space for individuals working through mental health and substance abuse issues.
That will create a void, Health Right board member Lyn Dotson explained, as the Walnut Street facility has morphed into a kind of community day center over the years.
Enter Hazel’s House of Hope.
Morgantown Community Resources, the entity that owns and facilitates the HHH property as a centralized campus for social services, has asked the city of Morgantown and Monongalia County to each allocate $250,000 as part of their American Rescue Plan programming to, among other things, provide for the creation of a dedicated day room.
By this time next year, both Health Right’s Spruce Street clinic and Friendship House will be out of the downtown. The clinic is moving into a building a stone’s throw from HHH, off Scott Avenue.
“The Friendship House is going to change focus and it’s going to move out of the downtown. It’s going to move down along the river near the old Aldi location. We’re already identified the space,” Dotson explained. “The objective is it’s going to be for opioid recovery and mental health and not a community day center.”
Dotson, who also serves on the MCR board of directors, said the funds requested of the city and county would, in part, help build out an additional 1,500 square feet to house a day room with shower, locker and laundry facilities that would also serve as an emergency warming shelter in the winter.
While both city and county officials voiced support for the project, there is some hesitancy in that there is currently no agency on board to oversee and program a dayroom/warming shelter.
“We want this to be successful. It needs to be there. There’s no doubt … You’re management of the building, you’re not management of what’s going to go on in there, which is a concern because the city and the county is putting money into it and we don’t even know,” Monongalia County Commission President Tom Bloom told members of the MCR board. “It’s not you we’re worried about. It’s taxpayer dollars. We just want to make sure it’s done correctly.”
The problem, MCR board member Ron Justice replied, is it’s difficult to get an agency to commit without having the facilities in place.
“We’re in a chicken and egg situation. You don’t want to get the program when you don’t have the space to put the program in,” Justice said, adding “It’s an absolute trust issue.”
The day center project is just one of many in the works at HHH as the rapid evolution of hotel-turned-social services hub continues.
A federal earmark of just over $1 million was obtained through Senator Shelley Moore Capito’s office.
“Part of the earmarked request that we got approved will be painting and sealing the entire outside of the building, so it won’t be a red brick Ramada-looking building,” MCR board member Mark Nesselroad said. “It will be a new, identifiable building. The parking lot will be repaired, and landscaping.”
MCR is working with City Neon on new signage, and has reclaimed the front lobby space, which was initially part of The Salvation Army’s area, for the placement of a reception desk and common area. The Hope Hill Sobering Center is expected to open on the building’s first floor sometime in August.
Further, the board is exploring additional security measures and the construction of various outdoor amenities, including recreational and exercise areas and pavilions.
A new HHH website is also in the works.
Dotson said he knows some people are frustrated these things aren’t already in place. He also noted there is no blueprint for how to stand up this kind of facility, which has been operational for less than two years.
“We’re hearing you. Many of these things we already have on paper. That’s not an excuse, but you don’t build this overnight,” he said.
