Gateway Nabs Sierra Tucson ED to Fill Lake Villa Post

Gateway High End

Located on 43 lakeside acres in a tony second home community just north of Chicago, Gateway’s Lake Villa facility has always been a super high-end anomaly in formerly public funded Gateway’s portfolio of facilities. And Gateway’s board, even though it mandated a transition to private markets from public funding over five years ago, has resisted putting Lake Villa apart from Gateway’s other facilities and marketing the property with premium pricing. While Gateway CEO Michael Darcy was not immediately available for comment, Patricia Ryding’s arrival from Sierra Tucson – the first high-end facility founded in the mid-1980s by Chicagoan Bill O’Donnell – may signal a change in Gateway’s attitude toward the key treatment asset.

High End Galore

Once completely bereft of its own stand alone high end facility – with Hazelden long considering the Chicago private pay consumer its very own private preserve until about a decade ago – the 10M strong Windy City mega market suddenly may be overflowing. Acadia Healthcare is promising to expand Timberline Knolls south of Chicago after paying $90M for the center last year, to the west a proposal called Kiva Recovery is going through local NIMBY vigilance and now to the north perhaps Lake Villa will join that group.

Multi-Million Renovation

Ms Ryding will be overseeing a multi-million dollar renovation already underway at Lake Villa, while she will be joining a new, already in place admissions staffer, which, of course, is a key marketing post on the private side of the addiction treatment business.

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