Mental health has had a stigma around it for years, and you have to overcome that.”

West St. Paul Mayor Dave Napier

Crisis and Recovery Center
2025 Livingston Ave.
West St. Paul, MN 55102
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On Monday, Feb. 3, the Dakota County Board of Commissioners cut the ribbon of the new Crisis and Recovery Center, a 16-bed mental health resource center that will provide mental health service from short-term residential to adult crisis treatment. The 16,-square-foot, 16-bed center will provide stays of anywhere from 1-90 days depending on the services required.
The center, located at 2025 Livingston Ave, in West St. Paul just across the parking lot from Dakota County’s Northern Service Center, was a joint effort with Guild, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit mental health service provider. Guild has been working to provide mental health services with Dakota County for the last 30 years and will be beginning operations at the new site Feb. 10.
The location of the center is notable. In late 2022, local pushback came from West St. Paul residents not wanting a mental health facility in their neighborhood. While support did eventually come from the community for the center, West St. Paul Mayor Dave Napier spoke to the placement of the facility as overcoming stigma surrounding mental health: “Mental health has had a stigma around it for years, and you have to overcome that.”
Dakota County Board of Commissioners Chair Mike Slavik agreed: “To put a facility like this in neighborhoods takes political courage.”
“The center will help individuals where they need to be helped. They don’t have to travel 60 miles to get that care. Part of their healing is to be with family, and so having it in your backyard facilitates that,” said Rep. Mary Frances Clardy (D- Inver Grove Heights).
Before a timelapse of the construction of the Crisis and Recovery Center from October 2023 to December 2024, commissioners, Guild representatives, donors, and legislators alike spoke to the completion of the facility, highlighting the cooperation between private donors, and county, state and federal partners, that allowed such a project to be completed.
The project received $6 million from state bonding, $3.45 million from a Minnesota Department of Human Services grant, and $4.64 million of federal funds from the American Rescue Plan Act. Due to cooperation between federal and state partners, the Crisis and Recovery Center was built without using Dakota County property taxes, according to Chair Slavik.
Dakota County Director of Social Services Emily Schug called the project, a “beautiful example of a lot of different partners coming together to invest into mental health in our community.”
Dakota County Commissioner Joe Atkins introduced the speakers by contrasting the event to the other many ribbon cuttings in which he had taken part: “There’s probably none that’s more important than the one we’re here for today.”
Guild CEO Trish Thacker spoke alongside commissioners at the event: “We at Guild are so excited to be part of this project in which we can welcome people in this warm, dignified and peaceful space.”
Donor Deb O’Gara spoke to the importance of the private bedrooms of the facility: “I think the most important thing about the building is that there’s 16 private bedrooms and bathrooms. I think that’s very, very unique to any programming I have seen in the mental health community.”
The O’Gara family provided the single largest donation in Guild’s history to furnish the center and fund its operation for the first year.
On behalf of Sen. Amy Klobuchar, Outreach Director Allie Glass spoke to the federal partners for the project: “As your partner in Washington, I will continue to support legislation that provides life-saving support for individuals experiencing mental health crises.”
The Crisis and Recovery Center features amenities designed to build a community and make the space feel like home. The center boasts kitchens, meditation rooms, therapy rooms, laundry facilities, conference rooms, activity rooms complete with exercise equipment and large windows that allow for natural light.
Open gathering spaces both indoor and outdoors encourage patients to build relationships with each other, while the individual rooms allow for privacy. Details down to providing TVs and computers in common areas to draw residents out of their rooms are purposeful: “The purpose of this facility is to connect,” said Guild Chief Clinical Officer John Adams.
For Sara Hillstrom, a former patient with Guild, the center’s warmth is a foundational aspect of treatment: “I can’t even stress how much healing can be done when you feel like it’s a home environment.”
The center will provide three service models: Intensive Residential Treatment Services, Crisis Residential Services, and Place to Go. The final service, Place to Go, is a crisis treatment that was explicitly “identified as a need in Dakota County’s existing crisis services continuum,” according to the Crisis and Recovery Center webpage.
Dakota County’s continuum of service for mental health issues is a term worth unpacking. Like healthcare which manifests in various forms from scheduled visits to urgent care to emergency care, so too does healthcare for mental health.
This continuum model “offers community members across Dakota County access to services no matter what they need,” said Crisis Continuum Supervisor Jamie Rud-Colette.
For example, Dakota County operates a 24/7 mobile crisis team for short-term crises and stabilization services like intensive therapy social work in the longer-term, 6-8 weeks. The Place to Go service is what fits into the middle of those services, what Rud-Colette calls “walk-in urgent care assessment for adults.”
The service is able to “field that initial call for help: meet people where they are at in an acute situation and then hand off services to Guild,” said Rud-Colette.
For more information on the Crisis and Recovery Center, visit Dakota County’s website at https://www.co.dakota.mn.us/HealthFamily/MentalHealth/Adult/Pages/crisis-and-recovery-center.aspx