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New York firm seeks to expand its psychiatric services in Vernon Hills

A vacant office building in Vernon Hills might be repurposed as a psychiatric hospital providing specialized care to children, adolescents, adults and seniors.

Village officials have given the informal go-ahead to US Healthvest to proceed with the review and public hearing process to create a 100-bed hospital at the former CDW/Allstate Insurance building at 300 N. Milwaukee Ave., in the Continental Executive Parke.

The building has been vacant for about a year.

The company is seeking a change in village code to allow the hospital as a special use in the business park. In a presentation Tuesday during the village board's work session, hospital officials said they would remodel the interior of the 75,444-square-foot building but would not make any exterior changes.

In 2014, New York-based US Healthvest took over Maryville Academy's psychiatric hospital in Des Plaines and operates it as Chicago Behavioral Hospital.

The company also has proposed a $31.3 million facility in Northbrook.

Information provided to Vernon Hills said the Des Plaines facility is at capacity, prompting the company to look at the market.

“They conducted an analysis, and what they saw was that in the northern Cook County/Lake County area, there was a need for it,” Assistant Village Manager Joe Carey said.

The Vernon Hills hospital is proposed as a locked facility with patients discharged to family members or friends only if transportation is provided.

The hospital would operate 24 hours a day and employ 150 over three shifts.

Specialized programming would include psychiatric intensive care services. Information provided to the village includes letters from the Des Plaines police and fire chiefs explaining their relationship with the facility.

Police confirmed in a Vernon Hills follow-up contact the relationship was positive.

Information on its website says company CEO and President Richard Kresch, a psychiatrist, is filling a gap in mental health care stemming from a 25 percent decline in psychiatric hospital beds in Illinois during the last two decades.

US Healthvest will appear before the village's advisory planning and zoning commission to consider the change to code and a special-use permit, but the earliest that will occur is December, Carey said.

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