QuickTake:

The nonprofit social service provider has won a grant to create a 12-bed facility, which is expected to start accepting youth in June 2027.

Looking Glass Community Services, a youth social services provider in Lane County, is planning to renovate a Eugene building into a 12-bed secure inpatient facility for adolescent youth. 

The nonprofit organization received $6.7 million for the project from the Oregon Health Authority with funding lawmakers allocated in 2025. That’s part of $11.5 million in state funding Looking Glass is receiving to expand and add services to help youth who have experienced trauma and face behavioral health challenges.

The secure inpatient facility will be located at the organization’s Looking Glass PEER Shelter at 2517 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. The shelter’s letters stand for persevere, enlighten, empower and renew.

That building is also called the McKay Lodge, named after Linda Lee McKay Korth, a philanthropist and former Looking Glass board member who died Sept. 4.

The building is on a campus with other youth programs, including Lane County’s juvenile justice services and an incoming Nexus Family Healing facility for adolescents with behavioral health needs.

The Looking Glass secure inpatient facility will offer youths with severe behavioral health needs a way to get the care they need without entering a hospital, said Chad Westphal, Looking Glass president and chief executive officer.

It will have 24/7 nursing support and access to psychiatric services, Westphal said. About 60 employees will be hired.

“These are some kids that have trauma histories, and the results of those trauma histories are behaviors that can be really difficult to manage,” Westphal said.

The facility will serve adolescents up to age 18. The staffers will include therapists, case managers, a clinical director and a director to oversee day-to-day activities. 

Westphal expects Looking Glass to start accepting youth into the facility in June 2027 after renovation work is finished.

Other work happening first 

Now, renovation work is underway for a new site for Looking Glass’ PEER shelter, which serves homeless youth, Westphal said.

Of the $11.5 million in state funding, $4.8 million will allow Looking Glass to renovate a different building near the intersection of Roosevelt Boulevard and Highway 99. 

That will be the future site of the shelter, which serves homeless youth. The site will allow Looking Glass to increase the number of beds in the shelter from 13 to 18, Westphal said. 

When the shelter is finished, Looking Glass will shift its focus to renovating the McKay Lodge and preparing it to become a secure inpatient facility.

Those renovations include work to keep the patients safe as they recover, including ensuring that the rooms do not include features or items that could be used to harm oneself.

Westphal said the location of the inpatient facility is ideal, as Looking Glass runs a regional crisis center at that campus that receives youth referred from the Oregon Department of Human Services.

That center includes residential mental health treatment, and youth who need more advanced care can move to the secure inpatient facility.

Ben Botkin covers politics and policy in Lane County. He has worked as a journalist since 2003, most recently at the Oregon Capital Chronicle, where he covered justice, health and human services and documented regional efforts to combat fentanyl addiction. Botkin has worked in statehouses in Idaho, Nevada, Oklahoma and, of course, Oregon. When he's not working, you'll find him road tripping across the West, hiking or surfing along the Oregon Coast.