Carroll Institute to close one location, expand another with more beds

A building expansion that will start this spring will allow a Sioux Falls mental health care and substance-abuse center to offer all its services in one location.

The Arch, the residential treatment facility for Carroll Institute at 516 W. 12th St., will expand from 111 beds to about 150 when the addition is completed in mid-2026. The remodeled house at 327 S. Spring Ave., where the New Horizons program is located, will be torn down. The Carroll Institute office at 310 S. First Ave. will close and move to the new location at 12th Street and Spring Avenue. That space now contains offices for counseling, therapy and mental health services, along with administrative, medical billing and client-relationship services.

There are three reasons behind the decision to put all Carroll Institute’s services under one roof, said Tiffany Butler, executive director for almost three years: management structure, workforce development and community awareness.

“It’s difficult to manage 65 employees that are spread out over three different locations,” she said. “If we’re all in one location, we can serve as backup for people who are out with illness or tied up with training and be able to cover shifts.”

Having one site also will make it easier for those in the community who show up to the First Avenue building when they need to be at The Arch and vice versa, Butler said.

“There’s just a lot of opportunity from staff development to workforce development and staff sharing and also community access points,” she said.

Mark Broders started as the chair of the Carroll Institute board of directors on Jan. 1, after serving as a member for four years. As the Sioux Falls area has grown, the need to expand services also has increased he said.

“Moving to one campus is a great solution to a rising need,” he said. “Without great leadership, none of this would be possible. Tiffany and her staff have the passion, vision and understanding of what they’re doing, and all of that combined led to this moment.”

The Arch on 12th Street was opened about 10 years ago, and from the beginning, the expectation was that it would someday expand, Butler said. Gary Tuschen, who preceded her and spent 22 years leading Carroll Institute, and previous boards carefully looked toward the future, she said.

The current structure housing The Arch was designed in terms of the agency’s needs and financial capability in the early 2010s.

“They knew that down the line the demand would increase,” Butler said. “They knew the courts didn’t want to put people in incarceration repeatedly and what could be offered to individuals. It took 10 years to work through the financial aspect of putting up another building.”

The addition’s residential area will be a mirror image of The Arch’s existing offerings, Butler said. The new building will have designated spaces for family therapy and play therapy. There is no play-therapy space currently.

A parking lot facing 12th Street will be turned into a fenced-in outdoor area for inpatients. A parking lot west of the building will remain.

VanDeWalle Architects designed The Arch as the first phase of a two-step process. Travis Stuntebeck was there for the initial planning and is senior project manager for phase two. The original design included a link from the Spring Avenue structure to the new building.

“We designed it 10 years ago to the existing home knowing that eventually they were going to tear it down and do an addition,” Stuntebeck said. “There were inner workings we could do to make that cost effective for Carroll.”

Blackwing Elite Builders is the contractor for the $7 million project. Currently, The Arch’s first floor is undergoing remodeling since the new design will change the entrance. That should be completed in late March. The building housing New Horizons will be razed in early April if the weather cooperates. Completion is targeted for June to September 2026, Butler said.

The Arch has 87 residential treatment beds with 24 located in New Horizons, which serves women. Residential treatment runs at about 90 percent capacity, meaning 92 to 96 of the current beds are full.

“Some days it’s up to 102, other days it’s down to 80, depending on the transition,” Butler said. “We have a waitlist.”

Carroll Institute developed from the Community Committee on Alcohol Abuse, designed in 1971 as a first point of referral for those seeking treatment and information. The Arch opened later that year. Carroll Institute is named after Lynn Carroll, who became CCAA’s first acting director in 1973 after guiding Hazelden Treatment Center in Minnesota for two decades.

The Arch added detoxification services to its offerings in 1979, and after The Arch, The Information and Referral Center and the Detox Center became known as Carroll Institute, adult and adolescent outpatient treatment was added. Carroll Institute became the state’s first accredited adolescent outpatient treatment program for chemically dependent teens in 1987.

Carroll Institute moved to its downtown location in 1996, occupying a former bank and law office. Transitional housing services for both men and women moved to the new Arch building in 2015.

Carroll Institute serves all ages, Butler said. While the residential program is only for those 18 and older, with 25 to 44 the primary age range, outpatient services are offered to adolescents and adults.

In addition, Carroll Institute reached more than 10,000 students in kindergarten through high school last year through the prevention services it brings to seven Sioux Falls-area school districts. Those classroom sessions focus not just on drug-abuse education but on violence prevention, healthy-living skills and social skills, Butler said.

Carroll Institute offers its outpatients up to 19 hours of programming a week, although the most currently being used is nine hours. People using the residential services at The Arch have access to the community, can pursue employment, attend parole and probation meetings and court hearings, and visit with their families.

“It’s everything they need in hopes of having a successful transition,” Butler said.

Having all its services on one campus also will make it more convenient for inpatients to use what Carroll Institute offers. Rather than go to another building, they can stay in their current location, Butler said.

“It’s a great opportunity for a warm hand-off,” she said. “They can walk from the front desk of The Arch to the front desk of the outpatient program and say, ‘your new counselor will be Tiffany, this is her, this is your check-in time.’ It’s a nice warm hand-off for those transitioning.”

Carroll Institute also offers counseling services to the public and to the population that has transitioned through treatment.

The Arch is only a block away from a Volunteers of America facility, and the two agencies share some clients. A couple of blocks away, in 2026, the behavioral community health center Southeastern Behavioral Health will move to the first floor of a building on West 11th Street. Construction should begin this spring. Southeastern will provide 24-hour services, including addiction, mental health and counseling services.

While the agencies have different accreditations, down the road there should be opportunities for partnership, Butler said.

“They excel in their area, we excel in our area,” she said.

Broders agrees.

“There will be an opportunity to work together for sure; it’s something we’ve talked about as a board,” he said. “There are things you can do together and should do together.”

The Arch sits just north of First United Methodist Church and has a strong partnership with it, Butler said. The church will lease parking spaces to Carroll Institute during construction, and outpatients will take part in community service opportunities such as landscaping and cleaning the parking lot.

With the expanded number of residential beds, there likely will be a need to expand residential staffing and the clinical team, Butler said.

Carroll Institute’s board will decide later what to do with the First Avenue building, Butler said. It could be leased or sold.