HELTONVILLE – The North Lawrence Community School board voted to sell the Heltonville School for $735,000 during their meeting Thursday evening.
There were two bids for the school with the highest bidder awarded to Jerry Ford, owner of Transitions LLC, and the other bid came from Michael Coryea, who is a lifelong Bedford resident who is a psychiatric mental health practitioner.
According to Ford, Heltonville school will be designed for a 100-bed drug treatment facility to expand the recovery center that already exists in Bedford.
The facility will be a 28-day inpatient with a partial hospitalization program. The patient will participate in a full recovery program and will graduate from the program.
The patient will then receive job placement, along with housing once they complete the 28 day program.
Jerry Ford says it will take approximately six months to get the Heltonville facility ready to receive patients.
“I really appreciate the school board, they have done their due diligence as far as the bidding process. I thank it is important for Lawrence County residents to know a Heltonville guy, after being born and raised out there kept the school,” said Ford. “We are going to keep this for the community, and we are going to do some really good things for Heltonville and the surrounding areas”.
