May 9—CLARKSVILLE — A community-based recovery center serving Southern Indiana and Louisville will admit its first client this week after Monday's grand opening.
Avenues Recovery Center is a national company that provides rehabilitation and drug and alcohol detox. The newest facility opened at 4601 Medical Plaza Way in Clarksville and is the 10th location opened in six years.
The company celebrated the opening of the facility with a ribbon-cutting on Monday, allowing people to view the inside of the facility and hear from Avenues' leaders.
The center has enough beds for 91 clients at a time, though company CEO Hudi Alter said they are working at half-capacity for the first year it is open.
In this time, the team will ensure that outcomes, schedules and curriculums are working effectively.
"It's not just about putting patients in beds, it's really about making sure that your product is as excellent as you can make it, so that's very important to us," Alter said.
Executive director for the Clarksville center, Rafi Weinschneider, said that they were already having to refer clients to other treatment centers while they were still in the process of opening.
"We were [already starting] to see some traffic. The need is definitely here, because with the very minimum that we've done already people are already reaching out to us," Weinschneider said.
Alter said that after they opened a center in Fort Wayne last August they began to see a growing waitlist that was inching closer to Southern Indiana, making them realize a facility was needed in the region.
For individuals that need treatment for substance abuse disorder, Alter said they typically attend a facility within a 50-mile radius.
Alter said that Clarksville was a good location for the facility because it is an expansion of middle Indiana and the Louisville area.
"We're very confident that we'll be able to serve the communities that we hope to serve," he said.
Both Alter and Weinschneider spoke to the view that there were no facilities that could treat patients within local communities.
"We feel that this is an area that it was somewhat ignored by some larger chains. Some of the large chains, their model is to fly people out to their nice place in California, Florida which is very nice, but in terms of healing and long-term community for clients, we don't believe in that model," Weinschneider said.
"We believe it is best for them to be based in the community," he said.
By partnering with the community, they can continue their recovery once they finish the program.