PROGRESS: Rosecrance Jackson touts facility expansion in Sioux City

The new additions included a chapel, gymnasium with a basketball court, fitness center and scenic walking path with benches.

When the center at 3500 W. Fourth St. was built in 2015 as a child and adolescent recovery hospital, the plans called for a recreation center, said Julie Enockson, regional president of Rosecrance Jackson Centers. However, the budget didn't allow that amenity to be built at that time. The facility now serves both adolescents and adults.

After the addiction treatment provider was awarded a $2.3 million state grant for the project in fall 2022, the Rosecrance Foundation subsequently launched a capital campaign dubbed "Building a Brighter Future" to make the expansion a reality.

The campus works with adolescents ages 13 to 17 as well as adults needing residential services and withdrawal management. Nearby are the Women and Children's Center and Sanctuary Apartments for housing. A large number of the mothers looking for treatment utilize Medicaid (which only allows for a residential level of care for 30 days).

"The funding from this ARPA grant was able to help us kickstart this and get it going," Enockson said last April of the capital campaign. "This has always been the plan to bring our campus together. So having this grant opportunity to be able to build this now is going to take the vision that we had for this campus of bringing the women's center and reusing our whole campus."

Now, those living at the Women and Children's Center and Sanctuary Apartments, which are located just east of the facility, can follow the trail down to the new chapel and gymnasium.

The chapel boasts stained glass windows and Rosecrance Behavioral Health President & CEO Dave Gomel said the nondenominational space can help "fill the hole in the soul" caused by the devastating diseases of alcoholism and drug addiction.

As for the fitness center, patients can utilize elliptical machines and treadmills as well as other exercise equipment. The gym features two basketball hoops, lines for volleyball and even space for yoga. Rosecrance Jackson will also employ a trained therapeutic recreational specialist.

"Young people need a place to run around and when they don't, it's no good," Gomel said during a Sept. 25 event. "This gives us that ... All of our patients deserve this. They deserve this."

Rosecrance Jackson has operated in Siouxland and the state of Iowa since 1976 and serves 88 counties in the Iowa. In July 2018, the Sioux City-based Jackson Recovery Centers merged with Illinois-based Rosecrance. Rosecrance Jackson also has an outpatient location downtown at 800 Fifth St., where individual and group therapy sessions are held.

Enockson said alcohol and methamphetamine are the most common substances people are seeking treatment for in the area, but she also noted Rosecrance Jackson Centers is seeing more people with opiate and fentanyl addictions.

In 2020, drug overdose deaths in Iowa grew 23% over the prior year, and 254,000 adult Iowans reported alcohol dependence or abuse in the past year.

"Anybody who's going through substance abuse and working on their recovery, their wellness, their health is part of that," Enockson said. "Adolescents, especially, have a lot of energy. Now, with having this rec center, they'll be able to exert some energy that they weren't able to before."