Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation Plans Expansion of Betty Ford Center

Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation has unveiled plans for a four-year, $30 million renovation and expansion of the Betty Ford Center in Rancho Mirage, California. The project will add three buildings and update existing facilities on the grounds. The center was founded in 1982 by former First Lady Betty Ford and former U.S. Ambassador Leonard Firestone.

The project will expand the facilities to 170,000 total square feet, up from the current 137,200 square feet of space. Residential capacity will be increased to 240 from the current 184, allowing for more day-treatment level of care options.

Phase I will by highlighted the construction of a 22,748-square-foot Day Treatment Pavilion that will accommodate 44 patients and include office space, group rooms and an auditorium. Phase II of the project, slated to begin in 2023, will remove two existing residential buildings and add a new 20,935-square-foot residential pavilion with 46 beds. A similar second new building will follow in Phase III in 2024.

“Amid record-high overdoses, and the daily pain experienced by millions of families struggling through the chaos of addiction, it is imperative that we build capacity to help more people; create more flexible ways to engage with services; provide healing spaces that reflect the dignity and respect all health care patients deserve; and amplify the attractive, stigma-busting reality that treatment is effective and recovery works,” Hazelden Betty Ford president and CEO Mark Mishek said in a news release.

Mishek, incoming Hazelden president and CEO Joseph Lee, MD, and Hazelden Betty Ford trustee Susan Ford Bales, the daughter of President Gerald Ford and the first lady, will be among those who attend a groundbreaking event at the property on May 4.