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Read the press release here.

Drug Rehab Center Planned for Red Hook

By Nikhita Venugopal | December 19, 2013 7:06pm
 Mike Mossberg and Johan Sorensen, the team behind Urban Recovery House, a high-end rehabilitation center that's planned for Red Hook.
Mike Mossberg and Johan Sorensen, the team behind Urban Recovery House, a high-end rehabilitation center that's planned for Red Hook.
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DNAinfo/Nikhita Venugopal

RED HOOK — A high-end private rehabilitation center is coming to Red Hook.

The drug and alcohol treatment center, called Urban Recovery House, will target high-income New Yorkers who will receive short-term care at an inpatient facility proposed for 110 Beard St.

While the facility’s price range is still being determined, owners compared it to centers like Cirque Lodge in Utah and the Betty Ford Center in California, which charges between $33,000 and $66,750 for a one-month to three-month inpatient treatment.

Urban Recovery House, which will be a 20,000 square-foot building with four stories and a parking area, plans to offer one-to-one therapy, group therapy, holistic treatments, nutritional advice, exercise, music, yoga, acupuncture, among others, according to clinical director Johan Sorensen.

“In short, this will be a center of excellence,” he said at Community Board 6's Youth, Human Services and Education committee meeting Wednesday night.

Red Hook served as an ideal location because of its proximity to Manhattan as well as its “quietness in relation to other parts of New York City,” said Mike Mossberg, the facility’s CEO.

Urban Recovery House, which will hold 25 to 30 beds, will admit patients for four to six weeks, during which time they will undergo detoxification followed by therapy and counseling. The facility will only administer non-methadone treatments.

Patients will remain in the facility during their stay and are allowed to leave after consulting with physicians and ensuring they can be safely transported to their home or another clinic. 

Mossberg and Sorensen planned to work closely with the community through discounts for residents, hiring administrative and catering staff locally, partnering and donating proceeds to neighborhood organizations and sharing knowledge on substance abuse and addiction.

“Our expertise can be beneficial to other local agencies,” said Sorensen.

But for some residents, the facility is a worrisome sign that Red Hook might relapse after decades spent cleaning up the neighborhood that Life magazine declared “the crack capital of America” in the 1990s.

Drug violence was frequent in Red Hook’s past, most notably the death of Patrick Daly, the principal of P.S. 15, who authorities believed was caught in a crossfire between drug gangs in 1992.

”To think that we would step back after so much progress in this neighborhood is unconscionable,” one resident said.

CB6 asked Urban Recovery House to delay their opening for a few months and possibly host a larger community meeting for residents to learn more about the center.

“All these people are coming into Red Hook and changing the character of the neighborhood,” said Melissa Cicetti, who lives in Red Hook.

A resident, who declined to give her name, lives next door to the proposed facility and said she didn’t see the facility having a positive or negative impact on the community.

“It’s self-contained,” she said. “It’s not something that’s really going to affect the neighborhood.”