photo by: Bremen Keasey

The Bluestem Wellness Building at 534 Michigan St. is pictured Sept. 19, 2024. Heartland Community Health Center will be hosting a ribbon cutting ceremony on Sept. 26 to celebrate the completion of the building, which is set to open to patients Oct. 1.

Heartland Community Health Center’s new mental health building is expected to start serving patients next month, and a ribbon-cutting ceremony is scheduled for next Thursday, Sept. 26, the center announced in a news release.

The new Bluestem Wellness Building at 534 Michigan St., just east of Heartland’s main center, has been under construction since last fall, and it is expected to be open to patients starting Oct. 1, the release said. The 8,000-square-foot building includes designated spaces for a variety of the center’s mental and behavioral health services, including individual therapy, play therapy, psychological testing and psychiatric care suites, as well as a multipurpose room for group therapy and other programming.

Additionally, the building will have a floor dedicated to administrative services that will house a centralized call center and the billing department.

Julie Branstrom, the CEO of Heartland, said in a news release that the new building would help address the growing need for mental health services in the community.

“This new building doesn’t just create more access to care, but also creates a space where people feel comfortable seeking help,” Branstrom said.

Branstrom told the Journal-World the new building features eight patient-facing rooms, two meant for psychiatry and six meant for therapy.

Branstrom also said the rooms were designed with a “trauma-informed approach” in mind. The new building will feature soft color palettes and natural light in the rooms with the intention for patients to “feel comfortable,” she said. The name of the building is also a part of that. Branstrom said the hope was that by not labeling the facility as a space for psychiatric and behavioral health care, the name could help remove the stigma that often exists around that care.

The building is part of a $3 million expansion project that Heartland announced last June as the Journal-World reported. It took advantage of $580,000 in federal grants, $325,000 in regional grants and $420,000 in local philanthropic investments.

Branstrom said there are often long wait times for mental health care because of a scarcity of providers in the area, and that with the grant funding, “we thought this was perfect time to invest in more space to create more capacity for mental health services.”

Dr. Nick Evangelidis, a psychiatrist who works for Heartland, said the group is excited to welcome patients and families to the new building and believes the space will help the center “continue with our integrated, collaborative model” of psychiatric care. He said Heartland was also looking to add more mental health care staff to keep up with the high demand for services.

In 2023, Heartland provided mental health services to 4,830 patients; 1,414 patients were seen by behavioral health staff, and the remaining 3,416 were managed by a medical provider in family medicine or pediatrics.