After months of debate over what to do with a vacant building, the Indian River County Hospital District has made a call: it approved a three-year, free-rent lease letting local nonprofit Thrive turn its 10th Street property into a centralized hub for substance-use recovery and mental-health services.
The deal runs from July 1, 2026 through June 30, 2029. Thrive pays no rent during that initial term, but the free ride comes with strings — a series of operational and reporting requirements it has to hit along the way. The property itself is worth roughly $4 million.
The model is deliberately dual-purpose. One side is a 24-hour-a-day clearinghouse for anyone who needs detox or a rehab bed, with Thrive staff working to actually place people somewhere. The other side is temporary 'respite housing' for adult men and women dealing with substance-abuse disorders — a stopgap that fills a gap the county has struggled with for years.
The timeline is aggressive. Within 60 days of the lease starting, Thrive has to complete initial site-readiness work. By 180 days, it must finish interior prep and hire and train core staff. And within 215 days, it has to be up and running — centralized intake, respite, and recovery housing all operating. Thrive also has 24 months to decide whether to buy the building outright.
For the 772, this is one of those quieter stories that matters a lot to the people it touches. A single, coordinated front door for detox, rehab placement, and recovery housing — just outside Vero Beach city limits — is exactly the kind of infrastructure that addiction services on the Treasure Coast have long lacked.