Martha’s Vineyard Community Services will break ground Friday on its new hub for mental health and substance use disorder services.
The wing will be part of the 13,700-square-foot Main Community Service Center scheduled to be completed in 2026, which will join the Paul & Sandra Pimental Early Childhood Center built in 2021.
Plans for the center call for a accessible replacement for the nonprofit’s current small and aging structures, which they have described as a “maze.”
Community Services officials say the new wing will be client-centered and “inspire safety, dignity, and confidentiality,” a release states.
Announced this week, the newest addition will be named the William & Rose Styron Center for Wellness & Recovery.
According to Rose Styron in the release, the space is a way to give back to the Vineyard community and honor her late husband Bill, author of the 1990 memoir “Darkness Visible” about his struggles with depression.
On May 2, Community Services will hold a virtual “CEO Coffee & Groundbreaking” and in-person ceremony on their Edgartown Road campus in Oak Bluffs. A host of board members will attend alongside representatives from Martha’s Vineyard Public Schools and South Mountain Company, which is building the center.
Styron, a poet, journalist, and human rights activist, looks forward to the wing’s completion. “Living on this Island enhanced the richness of our lives,” she wrote of herself and Bill Styron. “It means a great deal to me—as I know it would have to Bill—to reach other families who need mental health services, and to help lift the stigma that surrounds depression and addiction.”
Dean Teague, Community Services CEO, thanked donors in a Monday press release, citing the nonprofit’s Space to THRIVE Campaign that raised $13 million of a $17.5 million goal. “Toward that progress, we are thrilled to announce that some four dozen donors together have contributed more than $1.5 million to honor the Styrons with a new named wing as we modernize MVCS’s facilities,” he stated.
Community Services staff will work in the nonprofit’s remaining clinic building during construction, Teague stated in the release.
