Towering drug and alcohol rehabilitation facility is proposed for University City

A towering drug and alcohol rehabilitation center is being proposed just behind the building formerly known as the International House at 3701 Chestnut St. in University City.

The proposal comes from real estate firm CSC, which owns the historic Brutalist student housing complex, now called The Mason. The company describes itself as one of the largest landlords in Mexico and has been expanding in the United States in recent years by acquiring large, vacant properties in high-value areas.

After initially exploring a life science use or student apartments, CSC decided to go in a radically different direction on the parcel just north of The Mason that fronts on Ludlow Street. Renderings show a 53-story building, although the developer says around 40 stories is more likely.

“We thought that the best possible use is for something that Philadelphia actually needs,” said Sal Smeke, managing partner at CSC. “[There’s] a very, very bad drug problem. No one wants to fix it; everyone is looking the other way.”

Smeke said the site would offer comprehensive services and between 150 and 250 beds, although, as with the height of the building, the exact number hasn’t been locked in. It would provide inpatient and outpatient services and be able to treat complex medical conditions like the wounds associated with xylazine use. Both public and private insurance would be accepted.

He said that he hoped the facility would attract patients from throughout the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions.

“We are still working on those plans. Some of it will be beds, recreation centers, classrooms, open space, so we don’t know exactly the number of beds that will be there,” Smeke said. “We want to make sure this becomes the drug rehabilitation hub of the Northeast.”

The new building would be close to the historically protected Mason, formerly the International House, and would feature some designs to make the proximity less oppressive to residents of the older building, he said.

The project’s architects took inspiration from a valley-bound town in Norway that doesn’t get direct sunlight for half the year and compensates with giant mirrors placed on a mountainside. The lower levels of the rehabilitation tower would be curved away from the existing building to similarly direct reflected light down into the courtyard between the buildings.

“We’ve got this cup facade, which will direct light down into that courtyard,” said Scott Erdy, of Erdy McHenry Architecture. “As we get lower in the building, that concave portion gets larger so it gets further from the windows of the existing building down into that courtyard, which allows in reflected sunlight.”

CSC will not operate the facility. Smeke declined to reveal the health-care provider CSC is negotiating with to run the rehabilitation center, saying that he had signed a nondisclosure agreement.

Language describing their probable partner on CSC’s development proposal — ”the largest stand-alone behavioral health company in the U.S.” — exactly mirrors the self-description of Acadia Healthcare, a company known locally for operating the Belmont Behavioral Hospital in Philadelphia. According to the development packet, CSC’s partner operates 253 behavioral health-care facilities in 38 states and Puerto Rico, the exact count on Acadia’s website.

CSC hopes to break ground by year’s end on the 517,000-square-foot tower, which Smeke believes does not need permission to move forward from the city’s Zoning Board of Adjustment. He also said the $300 million project’s financing is progressing despite heightened interest rates that have stalled other large projects.

“The money’s coming; we have three offers for financing,” he said. “We believe it is going to be a very important statement for the city of Philadelphia, for University City, for the mayor, for everybody.”

Philadelphia currently has a total of 1,800 beds in residential rehabs for those in treatment and 150 inpatient beds for those with more complex medical needs.

Public health experts were stunned by the proposed scale of CSC’s development.

“I have not heard about anything of that size … I’m shocked and also kind of excited about this,” said Justin de Benedictis-Kessner, assistant professor of public policy at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. “If someone was able to build something on that scale, that could actually make a dent in the problem.”

The new use comes at a time when drug treatment services have been a subject of heightened controversy in Philadelphia over the last year, even as Mayor Cherelle L. Parker’s administration has made clearing up open-air drug use a top priority.

Last year City Council voted to bar supervised drug consumption sites from much of the city. Parker proposed pulling municipal funding from needle-exchange programs, ending a policy that spanned the previous four mayoral administrations.

City Council members have pushed back on rehab locations in Kensington and Wynnefield Heights and against an expanded homeless services site Parker’s administration planned in Fairmount as it cleared encampments in the midst of the city’s open-air drug market.

Councilmember Jamie Gauthier, who represents the area where the tower rehab site is planned, was the only district member who did not vote to ban safe drug consumption sites from her territory. CSC’s development package includes a letter of non-opposition to the concept from Gauthier, with the caveat that she needed more information about this particular project.

Gauthier confirmed that she was open to a drug rehabilitation center proposal but that she is waiting for answers about the operator’s approach to treatment and its business model.

“The property owners gave me a brief description of their vision last month,” Gauthier said. “I told them that I am not closed off to the idea because I believe we need to be doing more to save people’s lives in every Philadelphia neighborhood, but I needed more details in order to have an informed opinion.”

The proposal is in a corner of University City rich in undergraduate housing but has few permanent residents, which could mean less neighborhood pushback. All the Registered Community Organizations listed for the area claim to represent vast swaths of West Philadelphia and are headquartered far from the site (in most cases well outside University City).

The area is dominated by large institutions, chiefly the University of Pennsylvania, but also others like Drexel University and the University City Science Center, a nonprofit focused on research. Their position on the rehabilitation tower wasn’t immediately clear.

“We will have to explain to the community how this will pencil out with the students that are around there … if they want to seclude it to only be a rich student area [or] if you really want to have a diversity in the area,” Smeke said.

Asked about potential opposition to the project, Smeke said he principally needed Gauthier’s support. He also hopes for the mayor’s support. Her office didn’t respond to a request for comment on the proposal.

“I don’t have a crystal ball, but I’m sure the mayor’s office will be full throttle on this because we’ll fix 90% of the people that are on the street in one project,” Smeke said. “Put them into our building, sort of like a car wash, they’re going to come in dirty and they’re going to come out clean.”