An artist’s rendering of the proposed residential substance use treatment center for mothers and their children on Mount Support Road in Lebanon, N.H. (Courtesy Black River Design Architects)
An Upper Valley nonprofit is renewing its efforts to build a residential substance use treatment center for mothers and their children in a new location near Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center, though it may still have a long way to go.
The organization, Families Flourish Northeast, is in ongoing discussions with city boards, including the City Council and Zoning Board for various approvals needed to build a three-story treatment center on a vacant 2.16-acre property on Mount Support Road owned by Mary Hitchcock Memorial Hospital.
If the project is approved by these groups, it will also need to be reviewed by the Lebanon Planning Board. The lot’s neighbors include the hospital, transitional housing owned by Twin Pines Housing Trust and Summit on Juniper, a Dartmouth College-owned housing complex.
Families Flourish hopes to open the facility in mid- to late 2026, according to a letter submitted to the City Council.
“The COVID-19 pandemic increased rates of substance exposed pregnancies and the severity of maternal substance use have increased in the Upper Valley, as well as statewide,” the same letter, signed only by the nonprofit, reads. “Unfortunately, treatment need far exceeds supply, especially for pregnant people.”
Families Flourish Northeast was established in 2020 to bring a residential treatment center for mothers and families to the Upper Valley and to address an increasing gap in health care. “It’s a special project that’s going to take a village,” Courtney Tanner, chair of the Families Flourish board of directors, said in an interview last week.
In 2023, 13.4% of babies born at DHMC had prenatal substance exposure, more than twice the state rate of 6.4% and also above the 2020 rate at DHMC of 10.3%, according to the letter shared with the City Council. There also are only two other similar facilities in New Hampshire, both of which are in the southern part of the state and have a combined 26 beds.
Since 2021, the nonprofit has been working with Alice Peck Day Memorial Hospital to renovate an existing building on its Lebanon campus into a 14-bed treatment center for mothers, pregnant women and their children.
The APD project was abandoned in March 2024, when the nonprofit began looking for new properties, according to application materials submitted to city boards. The new proposal instead outlines a 12-bed facility near DHMC.
The group had to abandon their plans with APD for “a couple of reasons,” including challenges with renovating the existing building, Tanner said.
Tanner also indicated at a City Council meeting last week that the age of the building had presented significant challenges. APD’s homestead building was originally constructed around 1780 and renovated in 1937, according to Dartmouth Health’s website.
The new property on Mount Support Road “checks all of the boxes,” Tanner said Friday. The main benefits of the property are its proximity to DHMC and the Advance Transit bus line, and that it is large enough to hold the facility, Tanner said. The planned building has a footprint of roughly 5,800 square feet, according to application materials.
The opportunity to build a new facility instead of renovating an existing building also allows the nonprofit to “be intentional about a trauma-informed design to really serve this unique and special population.”
Trauma-informed design is a practice based on the idea that a physical space can impact peoples emotional well-being, especially in facilities providing human services, according to the Trauma Informed Design Society, a national network of researchers and experts. This type of design is done with consideration for how a physical space can promote a sense of “safety, well-being and healing.”
Families Flourish is in the “final stages” of negotiating a long-term lease with DHMC to use the property, and hasn’t reached a cost agreement, said Tanner, who serves as the senior director of government relations for Dartmouth Health.
In order to construct the facility the nonprofit needs the Zoning Board of Adjustment to grant the project special zoning exceptions. The nonprofit is seeking permission to construct the building on a designated wetland — a plan that has already been approved by the city’s Conservation Commission — and to allow the venture in a residential zoning district.
The zoning board has scheduled a public hearing to discuss the requested exceptions at 7 p.m. Thursday at City Hall.
The project, expected to cost $9 million, will be funded through a mix of state, federal and local grants, Tanner said.
The costs for the project have increased since 2023. Families Flourish had a $4.9 million fundraising goal for the renovations and startup costs at APD, according to Valley News reporting at the time.
Tanner declined to share how much money the nonprofit has secured so far and said the funding package has not yet been finalized.
Families Flourish is seeking a $500,000 Community Development Block Grant and a $1 million recovery housing program grant. The nonprofit has asked the City Council to support these applications, which the city did in 2023 before those applications were withdrawn, according to materials from last Wednesday’s City Council meeting.
There will be a public hearing to review and receive input on the grant requests at 6 p.m. on Wednesday, Jan. 22 at City Hall.
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