Eating Recovery Center Set For Final Approval

NORTHBROOK, IL — Trustees are set to give final approval Tuesday to a plan for an inpatient treatment center in a portion of a vacant office building. The Eating Recovery Center residential treatment facility planned for 4201 Lake Cook Road will focus on providing care to adolescents struggling with eating disorders and related conditions, according to its application for approval.

The facility will have 36 beds and 55 employees, and it will be staffed 24 hours a day. The center will operate out of the third floor of of the 66,000-square-foot office building at the southeastern corner of Lake Cook and Sanders roads, according to its application. Trustees have said the building, which sits along the Northbrook-Deerfield border, has remained vacant for more than a decade.

Denver-based Eating Recovery Center currently operates in seven states and has more than 1,200 employees. It has six facilities in Illinois, including three in Chicago as well as locations in Evanston, Oak Brook and a behavioral health center at 1535 Lake Cook Road in Northbrook, where it offers an intensive outpatient facility from that location.

According to its Kathleen Reeves, the center's vice president of operations and development, it currently runs three adolescent programs in the states of Colorado, Washington and Texas. The most recent opened two years ago and they are at 90 percent capacity combined, which has resulted in waiting lists. She said the company's research suggested there would be enough demand in Northbrook for the facility.

"We do not want patients and families to have to wait for quality patient care," Reeves wrote.

Representatives of the company have also expressed an interest in moving its outpatient facility to the 4201 Lake Cook Road location once a lease expires at its other Northbrook location, according to a memo from village staff.

The village board has considered uses for the vacant building in the past, according to the memo. The property was originally annexed into Northbrook in June 1985 following a lawsuit with the village. At the time, the village placed a restrictive covenant on the site that limits its use to offices, excluding health and psychological care.

The property owner proposed in 2015 a plan to convert the building into self-storage with a portion used as retail or financial services including a drive-thru. The application also included a second building to the south of the existing structure.

Trustees took a look at another application in 2016, when a psychiatric hospital proposed occupying the whole building. But board members felt it would be unduly burdensome on the police and fire departments, according to minutes from discussion included with the application.

The proposed recovery center will have no emergency intake services, and all admissions would be scheduled. According to a letter to the plan commission from the center, it has not found a need to have security personnel at its other facilities but could work with the village to implement any needed security measures. Ahead of a positive recommendation from the commission, a police commander explained concerns over staffing and security had been assuaged and the appropriate measures to mitigate security issues have been proposed.

The plan received unanimous approval from all trustees in attendance at the Aug. 14 meeting. Amendments to village zoning districts, resolutions changing restrictions on the use of the site and an ordinance granting a special permit for an inpatient center for those recovering from eating disorders are on the consent agent for final approval at the board's Aug. 28 meeting.