Construction on Corvallis mental health crisis clinic nears completion

“The hard part is over,” said Benton County Public Works Director Gary Stockhoff. “Now that you can see it coming out of the ground, it’s building.”

Storage tanks and oil-soaked soil halted construction. Now, there’s a concrete and wood-frame foundation where the county plans to open a behavioral health clinic this summer at 2025 Van Buren Avenue and Fourth Street.

It was planned as the first shovel-ready phase for a radical overhaul of the local government’s justice system, aimed at intervening in homeless incarceration.

Construction workers expect to break ground by mid-October on the courthouse and the Benton County District Attorney’s offices in North Corvallis, and by mid-year for the emergency operations center.

All three would be located on a campus near HP, and built along with a clinic in Corvallis as part of what is known as the Justice System Improvement Project.

County health officials would like clients to stay voluntarily for less than 24 hours in a clinic area called “chairs,” chairs and compartments that provide space for people in crisis to stabilize or connect. and counselors and prescribers.

Officials have blamed inflation and budget issues for the delay, closing the facility in June 2023 — months after the district plans to complete construction.

The plans called for two stories, three private offices, five stability chairs, five additional bedrooms to provide respite care, all in a building of approximately 8,400 square feet per cost set at $7.7 million.

The revised schedule pushed the end of construction to mid-2024.

But demolition and cleanup of the property, which previously housed D&M Auto Sales and a gas station, delayed construction.

Crews found buried fuel tanks that were not listed on property or environmental records, Stockhoff said, and Benton County had to remove soil from the site because petroleum products could be dangerous.

Benton County then added a vacation spot for a total of six to its clinic plans, and the budget increased to $8.9 million paid for with about $1.2 million in additional grants, mostly— hall from the Oregon Health Authority.

The district’s construction schedule now expects to move in late spring or early summer 2025.

Benton County plans to complete construction of its emergency operations center by mid-2026.

Earlier estimates called for $5 million to build the facility, which is slated to join the jail and sheriff’s office on the justice campus in North Corvallis.

But the cost and scope of the project increased and a funding request to Oregon lawmakers estimated the cost of the emergency operations center to be nearly double that, $11.6 million, by early 2023.

Voters lowered the $110 million bond measure to fund the jail and sheriff’s offices and the private enforcement agency’s costs are now about $8.8 million, largely funded by Benton County’s coffers and a grant of $ 1 million Federal Emergency Management Agency.