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From monastery to treatment center: a historic building becomes a place for people to seek recovery.

Article Excerpt
When we opened our doors at The Abbey last autumn, I felt an inexplicably divine sense that my work for the prior 17 years had been leading up to this moment. As I reflect on that transformational moment, I realize that my 17 years of unintentional preparation for opening an addiction treatment center were dwarfed by the nearly century-long wait our facility experienced.

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The 35,000-square-foot building was constructed in 1914 in Bettendorf, Iowa, as the Regina Coeli monastery for an order of cloistered Carmelite (Catholic) nuns. Unlike most Catholic facilities, however, the monastery's construction was not financed by the Catholic Church but rather through local townspeople's generosity. Ironically, those who contributed to welcome the Carmelites to the community had little interaction with them because the sisters lived exclusively behind the monastery's imposing walls (13 sisters were buried in its crypt). Their primary occupation was to pray for the local community.

A new purpose

The monastery was placed on the market in 1991 after the sisters left because the aging building had become unmanageable for them. My father took an interest in the...

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