As Springfield weighs annexation request, regional behavioral health needs hang in the balance 

The Springfield City Council Monday, May 18, will hear testimony on an annexation proposal that goes well beyond just adding land to the city limits — it’s an issue that touches on behavioral health, property rights and regional politics. 

The nearly 18-acre annexation request comes after years of planning by Lane County officials, PeaceHealth and other behavioral health providers to map out a regional strategy to help people facing mental health or addiction crises. If the annexation and other efforts are successful, the end result could be significant not just in Lane County, but Oregon, creating the state’s first campus with both a crisis stabilization center and behavioral health hospital. 

The pathway to this point required a massive and complex coordination between Lane County, which is overseeing the crisis stabilization center project, and PeaceHealth, which will run a 96-bed facility called Timber Springs Behavioral Health Hospital. If approved for annexation, both facilities will be near PeaceHealth Sacred Heart Medical Center at RiverBend in Springfield, right off International Way in a vacant acreage that now has a patch of hazelnut trees.  

Planners say the project will take pressure off PeaceHealth’s emergency department, where adolescents in need of acute psychiatric care can wait days for transport to Portland-area hospitals for care. The joint venture also would provide a place for people in the midst of a crisis to get care sooner, before an untreated condition worsens.

The stabilization center is essentially an emergency room – but for people in a behavioral health crisis rather than a medical one. The goal is to quickly get patients stabilized, assessed and evaluated – all with a plan to access follow-up care and support services as needed. 

In Oregon, six stabilization centers are located in Deschutes, Klamath, Benton, Clackamas, Columbia and Polk counties. Besides the Lane County proposal, another two are in the pipeline, one in Baker County and the Mid-Columbia Center for Living, which will serve Hood River, Sherman and Wasco counties.

In Lane County, the project also has opponents, including Richardson Sports and other neighboring property owners who object to the annexation, saying its intended uses don’t fit within the city’s comprehensive plan for that part of Springfield’s urban growth boundary. They have filed a lawsuit against Lane County and the city.

Regardless of that case’s outcome, county leaders, PeaceHealth staffers and other supporters need to navigate an array of challenges and tasks in the months ahead before construction can begin. Among them: the city’s annexation decision and licensing for new facilities from the Oregon Health Authority 

Here’s a look at what the project would bring to Lane County, the concerns of opponents and how regional politics play into the work:

Politics of the stabilization center 

Several neighboring property owners of the project’s location have sued Lane County and Springfield to block a state law from being used to fast-track the process. Oregon legislators passed that law, House Bill 2005, in the 2025 session as part of a package of changes to civil commitment law. The law allows local government agencies to approve facilities within 30 days of receiving an application that requests a development permit if the infrastructure is in place to support it.

The lawsuit, filed in 2025 by four companies including Richardson Sports, challenges the constitutionality of House Bill 2005, on grounds that it fails to recognize their due process rights as adjoining property owners and is contrary to the city’s comprehensive plan and land development code.

County commissioners approved a $7.8 million purchase agreement for the land in July 2025 after the bill passed. At the time county officials approved that purchase agreement, they also acknowledged that the county could have communicated better with Springfield when it was working on that provision of House Bill 2005, which passed late in the legislative session. 

Commissioner David Loveall was the only commissioner who voted against the purchase agreement, saying at the time he supports the project but asking for the vote to be delayed by a couple of months to meet with Springfield officials and address outstanding issues like traffic concerns.

Loveall is running for reelection against Springfield Mayor Sean VanGordon, who will play a key role in hearing the annexation request. 

Richardson Sports has donated $4,000 to Loveall’s campaign this year and donated $2,500 to his campaign when he ran for his first term in 2022.

Filling a gap

Jess Cashman, crisis services manager for Lane County Behavioral Health, works with the county’s mobile crisis team, which responds to calls about people in behavioral health crises.

Now, when a person in crisis needs help, the only option after an on-the-scene response is often the emergency room of the hospital. 

“Unfortunately, not everybody can stay then within the community, their crisis is still continuing, so our only option right now is to then bring them to the emergency department at PeaceHealth, and we know the emergency department is also being overwhelmed and flooded with these crisis-type calls,” Cashman said in an interview with Lookout. 

Cashman added: “The stabilization center just fills that gap for us and allows us to continue that care, continue caring for the individual in a longer-term situation.”

The center will have about 14 adult respite chairs, where adult patients can relax during their short-term stays. The center also will have space for about eight youths at a time. 

For adults staying longer than 23 hours, the center will have about 16 short-term stabilization beds. The idea is that someone can stay for a short while, perhaps several days if necessary, while making arrangements for follow-up care and, if necessary, a place to stay. 

That can be as short as up to 23 hours or several days to get someone stabilized. Part of that work involves connecting and transferring patients to other facilities for follow-up care. In some cases, but certainly not all, that will include the PeaceHealth behavioral health hospital. 

People will enter the stabilization center in different ways. Some will come through the mobile crisis team. Others will check in for help on their own. In other cases, police officers may bring people in who need help, rather than putting them in jail. 

Joan Tompkins, manager of behavioral health for PeaceHealth Riverbend, said getting people access to treatment before symptoms worsen is crucial. The stabilization center will help with that work, serving as an emergency room – but for people with behavioral health crises rather than broken bones, respiratory illnesses and chest pains. 

“It’s getting folks services immediately, having the crisis stabilization center so when folks initially need to access services, when things aren’t as severe, we can kind of get ahead of things for individuals,” Tompkins said. “For the community, crisis stabilization is a missing level of care across all ages, right now, so that’s going to be the real asset to the community.”

The goal is to get people treatment right away, regardless of location, so they can start recovery sooner. 

“Hopefully we can get folks the care that they need before they need acute care, and we can really help the vast majority of people navigate things a lot earlier,” Tompkins said. 

To be sure, the stabilization center won’t refer everyone to the PeaceHealth hospital; it will also work with other providers and organizations. PeaceHealth also will offer intensive outpatient care at its behavioral health hospital, another option for people who need follow-up care after leave the stabilization center, but not necessarily a hospital stay. 

In addition to reducing the burden on emergency care departments, the stabilization center will provide more specialized care for psychiatric needs, said Justin Madeira, CAHOOTS program coordinator at White Bird Clinic.

“That’s going to be the big difference between our current system and the stabilization center,” he said.

CAHOOTS provides mobile crisis intervention in Springfield. Madeira said most CAHOOTS clients who are not able to remain in the community are taken to RiverBend or McKenzie-Willamette Medical Center. The stabilization center will hopefully lead to better outcomes for clients and connections to aftercare, rather than “a revolving door of going into the emergency room, getting very briefly stabilized before being returned to the community” and not fully accessing other services, he said.

“The more facilities that are opening up or services that are available, and especially those that work and collaborate with our current resources, can really only work to serve our community better and to get more people the help that they’re really looking for,” Madeira said. 

Lt. Jeremy Sullivan with the Eugene Police Department said that when officers place someone on a noncriminal hold because of a mental health crisis, they typically take them to RiverBend. 

But, he said, the hospital has “never really felt like it’s been a good mechanism for getting somebody to the resources that they need.”

“A lot of times, we find some of the people that are struggling with mental health are released within an hour or so,” Sullivan said. “And there’s just not a good mechanism for them to get the treatment” they need.

Sullivan, who is on the project’s steering committee, said it’s important for there to be a seamless transition for law enforcement when they’re taking someone to the stabilization center, noting officers sometimes wait for long periods of time with individuals at the hospital before they receive care.

“While that’s not a conducive use of our time, it’s also not good for somebody who’s maybe experiencing that kind of crisis,” Sullivan said.

“The faster that transition can be, the better,” he said. “The better it is for the person, and the better we get them help, because that’s why we’re taking them there.”

Helping youth needs 

At PeaceHealth’s former university district location in Eugene, the hospital has had inpatient adult psychiatric beds since 1969.

Challenges persist here with access, as they do with other parts of Oregon, a state well known for its challenges with availability of care.

Currently, PeaceHealth’s 35-bed unit at the university district cares only for adults. As a result, adolescents with behavioral health issues need to board in PeaceHealth emergency departments, sometimes for up to a week at a time, before they can be transferred to Portland for care, said Alicia Beymer, chief administrative officer at PeaceHealth Sacred Heart Medical Center at RiverBend.

This means youth who show up at the stabilization center when a crisis starts can then transfer to the hospital – all locally and without a trip to Portland. 

“Ideally, they would wait less than a day and be transferred directly over to Timber Springs” at the Springfield site, Beymer said. “And they’re not having to wait for a week at a time in a windowless emergency department.”

PeaceHealth’s 96-bed facility, when it opens, will offer more access to adults and treatment for youth that didn’t previously exist. Twenty-four of the beds will offer adolescent psychiatric care, with the remaining 72 beds for adults. 

There are benefits for adults too. With the current number of adult beds, lower-acuity patients are more likely to be sent to Portland for care, Beymer said. Additional beds will allow more adult patients to get care locally.

For patients who show up at RiverBend’s emergency department for care, the length of time from start to finish is expected to drop by an average of 40 minutes with fewer patients with behavioral health needs at RiverBend. 

Now, RiverBend’s emergency department has seven beds for people who need behavioral health services. 

“Those seven exam rooms down in the emergency department are filled 24/7 with individuals who are coming here seeking that level of care,” Beymer said. “And when we open both the Lane stabilization center and Timber Springs, we’re anticipating, most of those beds will then be reallocated.”

That means they’ll go to patients with other needs unrelated to behavioral health – broken bones, lacerations, and other traditional emergency room needs.

The center’s staff will work with other providers, including shelters, group homes and organizations like Looking Glass Community Services, a nonprofit that provides housing and behavioral health services to youth in crisis in Lane County. 

Chad Westphal, president and CEO of Looking Glass, said the nonprofit is one of the longer-term providers that can help youth when they exit the stabilization center. Westphal is on a steering committee of community partners working to guide the project and coordinate related work – like how people will connect with follow-up care and services. 

“They already are fully aware of who the longer-term specialty care providers are,” Westphal said. “And that’s where these individuals are going to exit to, and Looking Glass is going to be one of them.”

Looking Glass has two residential shelters that serve adolescents and youth. They offer services and supports that include mental health treatment, substance abuse treatment, employment and housing assistance and family reunification.

Annexation agreement still needed 

Lane County and PeaceHealth filed a joint annexation application in January for two parcels of land, city records show. The 299-page application, filed by TBG Community Planning Group LLC on behalf of the applicants, includes a transportation analysis. 

According to the records, the combined 17.99-acre site is within the urban growth boundary and in unincorporated Lane County. Annexing into the city enables the extension of public facilities and services such as water, electricity, emergency response and streets. The site abuts properties that are in city limits, the application states.

The property is on the north side of International Way, east of Gateway Street, between Richardson Sports, 500 International Way, and a FedEx Ship Center at 700 International Way.

The site is currently zoned campus industrial, which, according to Springfield Development Code, is intended to offer sites in a campus environment for large-scale light manufacturing firms and research and development complexes. 

“The procedural posture of the proposed annexation request is unique, as a consequence of recent legislation at the state level,” the application states. 

“Because HB 2005 removes local government authority to require a plan amendment, zone change, or conditional use permit in these circumstances, the exercise of determining whether future development, as opposed to annexation of the property, aligns with plan policies is superseded,” according to the application.

However, the application notes that nothing in HB 2005 preempts the city’s annexation process or annexation approval criteria found in the city’s development code, “so long as such criteria are not interpreted to require compliance of the development with any Comprehensive Plan, Metro Plan or Gateway Refinement Plan policies.”

According to a staff report filed by the city of Springfield’s Development Review Committee, the proposed annexation does not meet the criteria for approval as proposed, with the main factor being the lack of a negotiated annexation agreement between the applicants and the city. 

Most of the remaining discussion concerns where roads will be built near the development, according to an April 24 letter from an assistant city attorney to Lane County and PeaceHealth counsel included with the staff report. 

“City staff are not in a position to recommend City Council approve an annexation agreement that deviates from council’s development objectives for the campus industrial area,” the letter states. “The proposal for an annexation agreement in your application does not align completely with these objectives.”

The letter says city staff intend to recommend at the public hearing that council neither approve nor deny annexation but direct staff on further negotiations for an annexation agreement.

An annexation agreement is being executed to mitigate financial impacts to the city, records state.

According to the letter, the city anticipates the proposed development will qualify for “super-siting” under HB 2005. 

A final decision will not be made Monday, said city spokesperson Elyse Ditzel. Annexations are adopted by ordinance, which require two readings. The council also could continue the public hearing and keep the written record open for more public comments, Ditzel said. 

Opposing testimony

Through their attorneys, two nearby property owners/managers sent letters to the City Council opposing the annexation, city records show. 

The letters, from attorneys for G Group LLC and Richardson Sports, raise similar issues, including that the proposed annexation violates the city’s annexation criteria because the crisis center is prohibited by the city’s comprehensive plan and development code. 

They also state that the application does not provide an adequate plan for needed public facilities and services, particularly stormwater and transportation. 

“To be clear, G Group does not oppose the concept of the crisis center,” according to a letter from the company’s attorney, Gregory Hathaway.

Both G Group and Richardson Sports say the crisis center is better suited on undeveloped land owned by PeaceHealth near the RiverBend hospital that is planned and zoned for medical uses.

G Group LLC, which Oregon business records show is managed by Dan Giustina, manages multiple properties on International Way. G Group is also among the landowners and property managers that filed a lawsuit last fall challenging the constitutionality of HB 2005. 

Through its attorney, Michael Gelardi, Richardson Sports states it invested in and developed its facility, which employs about 400 people, “a decade ago because of Springfield’s vision and planning for this neighborhood as a premier regional business park.”

“Richardson therefore has a strong interest in the local area and the effect that the crisis center development would have on local employment and the business community,” the letter states.

Richardson Sports says the City Council should reject the argument that HB 2005 preempts the city from applying its comprehensive plan policies to annexation.

Staff agree with Richardson Sports’ analysis that HB 2005 does not preempt the city’s annexation code or requirements, and the council may and should consider the proposed further uses of the property when applying the criteria of approval, according to the staff report. 

Giustina and Kelly Richardson, president of Richardson Sports, did not respond to messages from Lookout seeking comment.

Next steps 

RiverBend’s Beymer said PeaceHealth anticipates opening the hospital in early 2029. Other steps include fulfilling the requirements of a certificate of need with the Oregon Health Authority. PeaceHealth received questions from the health authority about its application and anticipates a public hearing later this year about its request. 

In the meantime, PeaceHealth will keep the university district unit available for patients.