Northern Rivers Family Services provides essential counseling, behavioral health care, social support services, education and healthcare for children between 5 and 18 years old as well as their families; with numerous locations across the Capital Region. 

Our team was originally tasked with supporting Northern Rivers grant application to develop a crisis-response center at their primary campus on Academy Road in Albany.  The grant called for a facility to allow emergency dispatchers to divert patients undergoing a behavioral crisis from hospital emergency rooms to a specialized facility to better serve the patient in their time of need.  As part of the successful grant application, WCGS Architects, BBL Construction Services, Huston Engineering, WEB Engineering and Hershberg & Hershberg developed a concept plan for the new Behavioral Healthcare Center, which later evolved into a transformational Campus Master Plan.  The reconfiguration of the Academy Road campus as part of the BHC (Phase 1) and Residential Treatment Center (Phase 2) projects have transformed the living and health service spaces for both Northern Rivers’ clients and staff.

The Behavioral Healthcare Center (BHC) is home to Northern Rivers’ crisis-response team, who are tasked with emergency response, as well as community outreach and in-home behavioral healthcare.  The BHC uses a pod-based living concept for a variety of in-patient residential treatment programs.  Each pod contains five (5) bedrooms located around a central relaxation and dining area, with private bathrooms and a decompression room also accessible from the central area.  There are four pods that are home to a total of twenty (20) in-patient clients. The residence pods have access to a central courtyard.  Additionally, there is a clinic to provide primary care medical services for the residents, staff workspaces and clinical offices,  as well as a full service kitchen / cafeteria that serves the entire campus. 

Construction of the BHC was completed in 2019.