Community Counseling begins upgrading facilities

The Community Counseling Center has begun moving two of its treatment facilities to upgraded locations.

Cottonwood Residential Treatment Center, which serves adolescents, will move to 2852 Independence St. to be housed in the building that was previously the Life Care Center of Cape Girardeau nursing home.

Ridgeway House Intensive Residential Treatment Services, which serves adult women, will be housed in a building being constructed at 6 S. Hanover St.

Sharon Braun, director of public relations for Community Counseling Center, said the organization acquired the building and property at 2852 Independence St. through a purchase-donation combination roughly a year ago.

The plan is to renovate the building’s interior, dedicating a quarter of the 35,000-square-foot facility to adolescent residential treatment.

The remaining 75 percent, she said, will be used as an outpatient adolescent development center. The facility as a whole will be called North Campus.

The Community Counseling Center has purchased the building at 2852 Independence St. in Cape Girardeau.Laura Simon ~ Southeast Missourian

She said the project is in the early stages, but the current Cottonwood facility on property owned by Southeast Missouri State University on Sprigg Street will remain open until the new facility is up and running.

“There will be no disruption of services whatsoever,” Braun said.

The new facility, she said, would provide “pretty much the same operations that are going on now, but it does give us an opportunity with the space to make perhaps some other additions to help these kids.”

The property that will become the new Ridgeway House also was donated, and Braun said its construction is moving ahead more quickly than that of North Campus. The center hopes to have the new Ridgeway House operational by July.

The facility will be 4,656 square feet, with a 10-person residential capacity, up from the current facility’s seven.

The new facility, like Cottonwood, will have 24-hour staffing and security and will provide an array of treatment options, including group therapy, individual therapy, crisis intervention and cognitive behavioral coaching.

The facility’s goal, she said, is to help women re-integrate into the community.

“We do everything we can to support them and make that happen,” she said.

tgraef@semissourian.com

(573)388-3627

Pertinent address:

2852 Independence St., Cape Girardeau, Mo.

6 S. Hanover St., Cape Girardeau, Mo.