LEBANON — After years of planning, an Upper Valley nonprofit is approaching the construction stage for a residential substance use treatment center for mothers and their children near Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center.

The Lebanon Planning Board is scheduled to start reviewing plans for the proposed 12-bed facility on Mount Support Road on Tuesday night. Families Flourish Northeast, established in 2020, is the organization behind the effort.

“We’re on the right track and we’ve got momentum,” Courtney Tanner, chairwoman of the Families Flourish board of directors, said Wednesday.

Planning Board approval should be the last hurdle Families Flourish has to cross before starting the $8 million construction project.

The nonprofit has secured $4 million in state and federal funding so far and has pending applications for an additional $3 million, Tanner said. The goal is to open the doors by the end of 2026.

The facility would bring the total number of residential substance use treatment centers for mothers and children in New Hampshire to three. The other two are in Southern New Hampshire. In Vermont, the only facility of this kind is located in Burlington.

The need for this type of treatment in the Upper Valley is well-documented. In 2023, 13.4% of babies born at DHMC had prenatal substance exposure, more than twice the state rate of 6.4% and also above the 2020 rate at DHMC of 10.3%, according to materials compiled by Families Flourish Northeast.

Families Flourish plans to accept pregnant women, mothers with their children under 12 years old and mothers navigating the child welfare system, Tanner said. The facility will also help to provide child care and other resources for the children in residence.

The nonprofit plans to contract with Medicaid in New Hampshire and Vermont to cover the cost of treatment because the “vast majority if not all of our patients” will likely be Medicaid beneficiaries, making accepting the insurance “critical in terms of access to care.”

“Medicaid is a bridge for them to start their next chapter in life,” said Tanner.

Dartmouth Health owns the vacant property at 424 Mount Support Road. Families Flourish plans to finalize a 30-year lease for the land by mid-June, said Tanner, who is also the senior director of government relations for Dartmouth Health, said.

If approved, the 20,000-square-foot facility would have three floors with 12 residential rooms, according to materials submitted to the Planning Board.

Plans for the building take into account patients’ trauma and past experiences. Such details include incorporating lots of windows to allow for natural lighting, colorful walls and furniture rather than neutrals that have “an institutional feel” and features such reading nooks and backyard play space, Tanner said.

“We know that many of the women that will come to us will have already navigated criminal justice or foster care environments in the earlier chapters of their life, so this building will really be a warmer, home-like facility,” Tanner said.

Since 2020, the nonprofit has been actively working on planning, fundraising and securing a location for the treatment center.

Until March 2024, the plan was to renovate a space at Alice Peck Day Memorial Hospital. But the nonprofit began looking for another site for many reasons, including challenges associated with updating a nearly 250-year-old building at APD, Tanner told the Valley News in January.

The newest iteration of the project has already garnered some approvals from city boards and commissions, including two variances from the Zoning Board of Adjustment in January to allow the construction in a residential zoning district and in a wetland. The Lebanon Conservation Commission and the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services also have approved of the wetland impact and planned mitigation measures.

The project will permanently impact about 5,600 square feet of wetland, but the proponents argued that a real estate broker found no other properties on or off the market “that meet FFNE’s requirements,” according to application materials. Some of the most appealing features of the chosen site are its proximity to DHMC and to the Advance Transit blue line.

Wetlands are highly regulated by the city and the state because of their environmental value, which the project planners say they will work to protect.

“The project will preserve wetlands that provide flood protection, recharge groundwater supply, provide wildlife habitat, and enhance water quality. The proposed impacts are located at the edges of the wetland, in areas that provide fewer functions,” the application said.

To minimize the wetland impacts, the Families Flourish team changed the planned layout of the development by rotating the building and relocating a parking lot. The designs also include a “limit of disturbance” beyond which land will not be impacted or will be restored after construction.

But plans to mitigate the project’s impact on a plant species found on the property are still being worked out, according to the application. Appalachian barren strawberry, which does not produce edible fruit but resembles a strawberry plant, is on the state threatened species list. Families Flourish is discussing “impacts and proposed mitigation” with the New Hampshire Natural Heritage Bureau.

The Lebanon Planning Board Meeting is Tuesday at 6:30 p.m. at City Hall.

Clare Shanahan can be reached at cshanahan@vnews.com or 603-727-3216.