In April 2016, HGA Architects and Engineers completed a 55,000-square-foot addition on a remediated site adjacent to the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation addiction treatment center in St. Paul, Minn. The facility offers treatment and lodging, outpatient mental health and addiction care, and community AA meetings.

Overlooking the Mississippi River, a red-brick mansion with a mansard roof, built in the 1880s, had long served as the Fellowship Club for the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation. To accommodate a growing outpatient population seeking treatment for substance use disorders, the mansion has been added on to throughout the years.

The latest addition doubles the number of people the facility serves by including 55 beds in the low-slung brick volume as well as outpatient treatment and offices in the upper level, clad in metal panels to echo the mansion’s mansard roof, and stepped back to reduce the addition’s massing on the site. The main entry has an oculus-like skylight that reflects the mansion’s turret. The foyer opens into a light-filled lobby with a stone fireplace, wood reception and admission desks, coffee bar and staircase.

HGA also incorporated panels of colored glass into windows throughout the addition, a nod to the mansion’s stained-glass windows. Patterns in the mansion’s stained glass and ornate wood banisters were abstracted and incorporated into the addition’s open staircase and wood privacy screens. The architects angled the addition with a 15-degree turn on the site to take advantage of a bluff and views, while creating a visual link back to the mansion. A glass-and-brick-clad walkway connects the addition to the mansion, where there’s a newly renovated mental health clinic.

To promote healing and a sense of wellbeing throughout the addition, large windows, including a full-glass wall in the group/lecture room, bring in abundant daylight and views of the gardens, Twelve Step path, labyrinth and river outside. Cherry and walnut (woods also used in the mansion) introduce warmth, as does the limestone (similar to that of the river bluffs) used for the fireplace.

The mansion was originally constructed by a St. Paul beer baron, and HGA’s addition was carefully sited next door over caves in the bluffs once used by bootleggers. Before construction, the caves were filled in for safety reasons, and the site, previously owned by a roofing company, was remediated for pollutants.

Project Source List

Completion date: April 2016

Owner: Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation

Total building area: 55,000 square feet

Architecture: HGA Architects and Engineers

Interior design: HGA Architects and Engineers

Engineering: Horwitz Mechanical (mechanical/plumbing design/build); Parsons (electrical design/build

Construction: Knutson Construction

Art/pictures: Hazelden Betty Ford

Carpet/flooring: Interface Carpet, Crossville, Back Bay, DalTile, Mannington, Johnsonite

Ceiling/wall systems:  USG, Accent, Whisper Walls

Doors/locks/hardware: Marshfield, Rockwood, Schlage, McKinney, Ives

Fabric/textiles: Maharam, Carnegie

Furniture—seating/casegoods: Acadia, Carolina, Cartwright, First Office, Hon, Izzy, KI, Krug, SitOnIt, Special K, Steelcase, Wieland

Handrails/wall guards: Acrovyn

Lighting: HGA and Parsons

Surfaces—solid/other: Vetter Stone Co., Mincey Marble, Samsung, Silestone, Corian, Hi-Macs, Hanex

Wallcoverings:  Koroseal, Novawall

Window Treatments: SWF Contract, Draper

Wood Paneling: Light Wave Laser Company

Fireplace: Symplifyre

Landscape Architect: Aune Fernandez Landscape Architects