Residential rehab facility planned for Jasper Road
Updated May 9 with additional information from the county planning staff report. Updated again May 13 with additional septic information from the health department.
Healing the Circle Lodge has submitted a special use permit application to establish and drug and alcohol rehab facility at 2601 Jasper Road.
The property is located in Cascade County and the company is working with the county planning office through the land use process.
A public hearing on the permit application is scheduled for 9 a.m. May 15.
Comments can be mailed to county planning at 121 4th St. N., Suite 2 H/I, Great Falls, 59401, or by email to planningcomments@cascadecountymt.gov by May 9, or comments may be given in person during the meeting.
The full county planning staff packet for the meeting was posted on the county website on May 9, according to the county website’s notification system.
Mike O’Reilly, the company owner, told The Electric in an interview that he an extensive background in establishing chemical dependency treatment facilities, but this will be their first in Montana.
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He said he’s had a number of calls from people with questions about the project and one ended up applying for a job.
“I don’t want to fight the neighbors, I don’t want to take over the neighborhood,” O’Reilly said.
He said area residents who have called are asking good questions and those who care about their neighborhood should ask questions and his team is happy to answer those questions.
O’Reilly said that in 2019 he moved from Utah to California to rebrand the Akasha Recovery facility there.
He then stepped aside while a business partner grew the facility with a focus on Native American clients. There, about 90 percent of the clientele was coming from Montana, O’Reilly said, but the insurance rules have changed, requiring patients to seek treatment within their own states to get coverage.
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Staff at Akasha called O’Reilly asking if he was interested in opening a facility in Montana.
He got in touch with Samantha Romero, a licensed clinical social worker living in the Flathead area, who he’d worked with previously to get the project started.
Romero will serve as the clinical director for the proposed Great Falls facility.
O’Reilly said they were familiar with areas like Big Sky, but those weren’t affordable for the project or for him to relocate his family to Montana.
So they started looking at Great Falls, Helena and Missoula.
During the search, they came across the large 7-bedroom house at 2601 Jasper Road that won’t need major construction. The property is currently under contract for Healing the Circle and they’ve submitted their licensing application to the state to work through that process concurrently with the county permitting process. They’re also establishing the business and will develop a website once the permit hearing is completed.
O’Reilly said it’s not a big corporation coming in, but a small business run by middle-class working families who are “putting everything on the line to try to do something special.”
He and one of his business partners are relocating to Montana for the project and they hope to open another facility elsewhere in Montana. O’Reilly is bringing his family, which includes eight children who he said will attend local Great Falls schools.
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They’ll be replicating much of the Akasha center’s programming, which is Native American focused, to the proposed Great Falls facility, but would also serve other populations.
He said they’re a for-profit business and their patients use insurance to help cover their costs of treatment.
The facility will have a maximum of 18-beds, O’Reilly and Romero said.
The facility will use existing utilities and infrastructure, according to their permit application.
An environmental health specialist from the City-County Health Department was in contact with Healing the Circle to let them know that the septic system was permitted for a five-bedroom residential unit, but it has seven bedrooms so a new septic system needs to be permitted and sized based on the new use, according to Rhonda Knudsen, CCHD’s environmental health division manager.
CCHD also informed the drug rehab company that they may be required to connect to city water and wastewater systems since the property appears to be within 200 feet of the existing city systems, under a state rule.
Knudsen said CCHD also contact the city to determine if the property is indeed within 200 feet of city connections and requested an estimate for connection.
She said CCHD typically requests septic permit applications to submit three system installation estimates to claim that it’s “economically impractical,” under the state rule.
Knudsen told The Electric that CCHD is not actively working on any permitting for the proposed 2601 Jasper Road project since they haven’t received a location conformance application yet from the county planning office.
She said CCHD is gathering and providing information pertaining to the property but don’t formally start the application process until they receive the location conformance application from county planning, which is part of the normal permitting process for new construction, changes in use and other land use actions.
Once that application is submitted, CCHD will review the information and contact the applicant to start the septic permitting process which involved a site evaluation and soil profile. Permits to construct septic systems are based on the application, soil type and septic regulation requirement, Knudsen said.
Most of the clients O’Reilly and Romero work with have jobs and families, but struggle with addiction.
It’s an inpatient treatment center with “strict criteria” for admission, which doesn’t allow anyone with violent or sex offenses on their record, O’Reilly said.
Romero said that when someone, or a loved one, is looking for help, the facility will have people available 24/7 to answer calls and screen potential residents to make sure it’s the appropriate level of care and facility.
“We can’t have anybody dangerous,” she said, and their patients are often those working, with families and their addiction might not be be noticeable people other than those closest to them.
Their patients are people “who suffer from addiction and need to get their stuff together,” she said.
Prospective patients are pre-assessed, insurance is verified and staff discusses costs and payments with them.
Patients are assessed again as they come in, to insure what level of care is needed or if they need to be in a hospital, Romero said.
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She said they’ll have a medical director and nurses on site. Most of the time, patients will talk to their doctors on site or remotely.
Medically detoxing can be very dangerous, she said, due the physical effects of withdrawal, particularly for alcohol, benzodiazepines or barbiturates.
Proper detox centers are a “great need,” she said, and often those struggling with addiction have a larger spectrum of emotions and feel things so deeply, but have no tolerance for those feelings and self-medicate.
Their job, Romero said, is to help them figure out how to deal with those feelings in healthy ways.
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They don’t offer outpatient care, but will work with other programs to connect their clients with those outpatient treatment options once they complete their inpatient time, to continue their recovery, O’Reilly and Romero said.
They’re planning to have 25-30 staff members, including nurses and behavioral health technicians. Those employees won’t all be onsite at the same time, but will cover various shifts.
They’re also planning 10-15 contractors, such as a yoga instructor and speakers.
Since it’s a residential treatment facility and staff will work in shifts, O’Reilly and Romero said there won’t be a noticeable impact to traffic in the residential area near the house.
According to the county planning staff analysis, the main access to the project will be from Jasper Road, which is maintained by the city. County and city public works departments were notified of the project in early May and had no concerns with the project.
The city planning office noted to the county that “traffic volume from staff would not be high enough to cause a public disturbance,” according to the county planning staff analysis.
Healing the Circle Lodge may need to upgrade the septic and cistern and a condition of permit approval requires the facility to obtain proper permits from the City-County Health Department. Since the property is within 200 feet of city water and sewer lines, the Lodge owners may be required to connect to city utilities in the future, according to county planning staff.
While in treatment, the patients learn new skills to deal with stress, health, nutrition and more, they said.
Patients and staff will eat onsite, so O’Reilly said they’ll work with local restaurants and businesses to provide meals.
Romero said that when O’Reilly reached out to ask her if there was a need for such a facility in Montana, she said “oh my gosh yes.”
She said some of her clients have a difficult time finding such facilities or other resources.
For the level of care planned for the Jasper Road facility, it’s a first stage of recovery and patients will be constantly supervised, Romero said.
County staff included a condition of approval requiring that inpatients be under staff supervision and according to the staff packet, the patient residents won’t be allowed to have their own vehicles or park on site.
The length of treatment varies, but it’s typically about 30 days, then patients go home or to another aftercare program to continue their recovery.
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The large house on Jasper will require some modifications, primarily locked rooms to secure medications, new locks on doors and some keypad locks for certain areas.
But no real construction is needed, which made the property so attractive to them, O’Reilly said.
They’re working through the licensure process with the state and if the county zoning board approves the special use permit, O’Reilly said they’ll start putting the staff together and have two full weeks of staff training before taking patients.
Romero said they’ll also go through an accreditation process with the applicable agencies, which is a detailed process.
Romero said they’ve heard local concerns about the impact to neighboring property values, but in their experience, such treatment facilities have no impact.
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She said they’re open to any community engagement ideas to help educate the community about addiction and treatment.
Romero will support the facility remotely most of the time, but will visit a few times a month.
She said she’s been in the chemical dependency field for about 11 years and never had an issue with homes like the one proposed for Jasper Road.
“You wouldn’t even know that they’re there unless we had this meeting,” she said the May 15 zoning board meeting on the special use permit.
O’Reilly said it’s not a prison, patients are there voluntarily and can leave the program if they chose, so they have no need to try sneaking or breaking out.
“People are coming there because they want help,” O’Reilly said.
According to their website, the Rocky Mountain Treatment Center offers a similar medically monitored detox program at their facility in a residential area just outside the downtown district.
The need for detox facilities in Montana is “massive,” Romero said, and there are few options statewide.
They’re planning a Level 3.7 facility, which is medically monitored withdrawal management and detoxification.
The next highest level of treatment is hospitalization, they said.
O’Reilly said the “treatment world is hard, it’s a tough business,” in terms of making money and the emotional toll.
He said he’s known people who come for treatment, leave, then overdose and die. He lost his first wife to addiction and a few weeks ago, his younger brother.
O’Reilly is himself an addict, having struggled with methamphetamines for about 15 years, before overcoming that addiction in 2019.
He went through treatment and “now I’m on the right side of it.”
O’Reilly said he’s left the treatment business but it always calls him back.
“It’s my purpose,” he said.
Romero said she also comes back to working with chemical dependency.
“There’s such a beauty in the growth when people really get it,” she said of those seeking treatment. “It’s one of the most rewarding and heartbreaking populations to work with.”
Romero said that they don’t conventionally advertise since it’s a confidential facility and patients are protected by health privacy laws so they’re “very low key, very quiet.”
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