RUHS Wellness Center Project Moreno Valley

The Wellness Center is proposed as a separate building on existing County-owned property which currently contains the RUHS Medical Center campus. The new facility would be two floors, consisting of approximately 120,000 square feet of floor area, and would include 100 beds (75 adult and 25 child/adolescent beds in separate units) for inpatient treatment. This new facility will expand existing inpatient services for behavioral health patients, relocating services from the existing Arlington campus. The average inpatient stay would be approximately six days and there would be no long-term inpatient stays (greater than one month) at the facility. The location of the Wellness Center on the Medical Center Campus will enhance synergies and coordination of care, simplify logistics and infrastructure, and better integrate behavioral healthcare within the broader spectrum of overall community health support. As part of Wellness Center site development, parking will be constructed to the north and south of the building, with the existing parking lot to the east of the building to be reconfigured. Truck loading/unloading would occur on the north side of the building. Vehicular access to the proposed Wellness Center building site would be accommodated via driveways along existing Cactus Avenue and Nason Street and new proposed driveways along Brodiaea Avenue to the north, which will require an extension of the roadway from the east near Nason Street. In addition, the Wellness Center would include the reconfiguration and installation of storm drainage infrastructure west of the Wellness Center in a north-south direction from Alessandro Boulevard at the northern end to Cactus Avenue at the south. The Wellness Center Project would also consist of a parking area and construction staging area to the west of the Wellness Center building, and a therapeutic Wellness Park to the south that would include passive amenities such as pedestrian paths, a lawn, gardens, shade structures, and seating areas. See Exhibit 1, attached. The California Department of Health Care Services (DHCS) has awarded RUHS a $184 million grant under the Behavioral Health Continuum Infrastructure Program (BHCIP) pursuant to the Behavioral Health Infrastructure Bond Act of 2023 (AB 531) (Act) which provides for grants to “construct, acquire, and rehabilitate real estate assets or to invest in needed infrastructure to expand the continuum of behavioral health treatment resources.” Under California Welfare & Institutions (W&I) Code section 5960.31, the Act also provides that certain projects qualify as a “use by right” and are subject to streamlined, ministerial review, meaning a qualifying project does not require a conditional use permit, planned unit development permit, or other discretionary local government review or approval. In addition, qualifying projects are exempt from California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) review. All of the criteria under W&I Code 5960.31 have been met. Moreover, the project elements described above are necessary to provide independent utility for the Wellness Center to operate as a separate project and meet the distinct state policy goals in conformity with AB 531 and W&I Code 5960.31.