WICHITA, KAN. — General contractor Icon Structures is underway on an adaptive reuse project for Sedgwick County Government in Wichita. The project that will convert a 105-year-old building that formerly housed a car dealership into the new COMCARE Community Crisis Center (CCC). The development will expand access to mental health services and consolidate the county’s services into a single building adjacent to the new Wichita Biomedical Campus (WBC).
Helix Architecture + Design is leading the transformation. Helix is also part of the architecture and interiors team, along with CO Architects, for the WBC, a joint initiative of the University of Kansas Medical Center, Wichita State University and WSU Tech to establish a regional health sciences educational hub. Once operational, the CCC will offer WBC students hands-on clinical mental health training and possible career internships.
The building will transition COMCARE, a certified community behavioral health clinic, from a residential facility to a new level of care as a crisis intervention center (CIC), providing stabilization services to those with more serious mental health needs. The CIC will allow for a centralized 9-8-8 suicide and crisis lifeline call center operations and 24/7 access to medical providers. It will also accommodate mental health services such as crisis evaluation and intervention, crisis observation and stabilization, and sobering and social detox for substance use disorders.
The CCC will occupy an existing two-story, 35,100-square-foot Art Deco-inspired building constructed in 1920. In addition to a car dealership, the building was previously used as a department store and fitness equipment showroom. Helix led a series of interactive workshops with the COMCARE staff and Sedgwick County administrators for the design. A new glass-enclosed lobby atrium and elevator shaft will add 900 square feet to the building.
The CCC will include patient rooms, a crisis observation unit, nurses’ stations, patient meeting rooms and visitation and shared activity rooms. The staff will have flexible workspaces, private phone rooms, conference rooms, wellness and mother’s rooms and a café-style lounge.
The project team includes CO Architects as programming consultant, MKEC Engineering Services as civil engineer and landscape architect and Professional Engineering Consultants as the MEP and structural engineer as well as IT and audiovisual.