The McNabb Center has purchased the former Greyhound bus terminal near Chattanooga’s airport to help expand the center’s mental health services, including its peer support program.
The former bus station at 960 Airport Road will be renovated over the next year to help provide better, more accessible space for many of those already served by the McNabb Center’s eight other facilities in Chattanooga, according to Gayle Lodato, senior director of Greater Chattanooga Area services for the McNabb Center.
“We are excited to have the opportunity to be able to move and expand some of our services into a new, more suitable location,” Lodato said in an announcement of the new plans on Wednesday. “This change will allow us to continue to grow our services and find new ways to best meet the needs of the community.”
The 4,210-square-foot bus terminal was built in 1997 on nearly 1.5 acres and was used by Greyhound for nearly 25 years before the bus company relocated its local terminal to its current drop-off and loading site at 740 E. 12th Street downtown. The Helen Ross McNabb Center Inc. bought the site for $650,000 last October, according to Hamilton County property records.
The center’s peer support programming, which will relocate into the Airport Road facility, is now provided at another McNabb Center location with an aging building that is not sufficient to serve the growing clientele.
“This new building, once it is renovated, will provide a single story site with more room and space for outdoor activities,” Lodato said. “Our peer support program provides a lot of help and teaching for daily living activities, and we hope to expand this program with a larger facility.”
File Photo by Dave Flessner / Greyhound bus lines used the Airport Road terminal for more than two decades before relocating its Chattanooga station to East 12th Street downtown. The McNabb Center plans to renovate the former bus terminal to provide a number of its mental health services.The program is funded by the Tennessee Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services and is designed to provide opportunities for adults with a mental illness to develop social skills in a community setting and also learn illness management skills. Nearly 90 individuals are active members of the peer support services, and they can come to the center Monday through Thursday, and again on Saturday, anytime from noon to 5 p.m.
Also moving into the new facility will be the state-funded Tennessee Move Initiative, which provides up to one year of social services for individuals who have been hospitalized at Moccasin Bend for 90 days or longer due to mental illness. McNabb Center staff help patients work toward recovery, obtain housing and connect to other community resources.
The Airport Road site, like the current location in Highland Park, is on CARTA bus routes and is also near many of the half dozen housing facilities operated by the McNabb Center. The new building will be one of nine sites in Chattanooga offering mental health services by the McNabb Center.
The new location will also house the center’s homeless outreach staff, who go into the community to provide services to homeless individuals.
The McNabb Center serves residents in 30 East Tennessee counties and last year said it offered help to 36,750 people.
The Knoxville-based McNabb Center expanded to Chattanooga a decade ago when it acquired the state’s oldest mental health service, the Fortwood Center.
Contact Dave Flessner at dflessner@timesfreepress.com or at 423-757-6340. Follow him on Twitter @dflessner1.