UF Health faculty, staff and partners gathered Tuesday to celebrate the opening of a new facility that will treat people facing addiction disorders.
The new, five-acre Florida Recovery Center (FRC) campus, which broke ground in May 2024, replaces a smaller campus near Williston Road on SW 13th Street. The facility at 4305 NW 90th Blvd. in Gainesville will treat up to 124 patients at a time with therapeutic and recreational support to aid in their recovery.
“I’ve been waiting for this day for about 25 years,” said Dr. Scott Teitelbaum, medical director of the UF Health Florida Recovery Center, in prepared remarks. “As a much younger physician… I would run around this campus, and I thought, ‘What a beautiful place this would be for a campus.’ Here we are 25 years later, and the dream and the vision has been fulfilled.”
The opening event concluded with a ribbon cutting and tours of the campus, including residential facilities where patients will stay in single- and double-occupancy rooms. The bright, spacious apartments have large windows that pour in tons of natural light and offer views of the serene campus.
The surrounding grounds include a swimming pool, gym, outdoor recreational area and pickleball court. Another building houses administrative offices and will provide additional services like addiction evaluations, group and individual therapy, lectures and outpatient care. In all, the campus includes 47,600 square feet of residential, therapeutic and recreation space.
“UF Florida Recovery Center plays a key role in the recovery community locally, statewide and nationally,” said Dr. Carol Mathews, chair of the UF College of Medicine’s Department of Psychiatry, to the crowd. “Thanks to the hard work of our dedicated faculty and staff, FRC ranks No. 1 in the state of Florida and No. 5 nationally for substance use recovery programs.”
The former facility offered some of the same amenities, like a swimming pool and residential quarters, but the new campus put all of the state-of-the-art offerings in one large space.
“This is a disease that’s not talked about, not like cancer or heart disease,” said Dr. Gopal Kunta, an oncologist from Clermont. Kunta traveled to Gainesville for the event to share his own journey in recovery at the center over a decade ago. “To have a place where we’re welcomed, and we have a second chance at life, it’s a beautiful thing. This disease isn’t going anywhere. We need a facility that is there to help the people who feel hopeless.”
One commonly repeated message was the effect that treatment has beyond the recovering addict.
“There’s a lot more people that need help and don’t get it,” Teitelbaum said. “My hope is that in the community, we can be a resource for helping so many people and touching the lives of families. When you treat one person, you’re not just affecting that person, you’re affecting the whole family.”
Teitelbaum said he carries his own family into his work, as well. The largest of several spacious conference rooms is dedicated to his late parents, Diane and Daniel. On the day of the event, the chairs were arranged in a large circle on one side of the room and in rows on the other, demonstrating the versatility for future use.
“My mother, in my darkest moment, would say to me, ‘As long as there’s breath, there’s hope,’” Teitelbaum said. “I’ve never forgotten that. I bring that to my work every day.”