SHARE August 9, 2016 - Philanthropist Bill Dooner (right) chats with property manager Jeremy Turner during an on-site visit at the recently purchased Walnut Grove Office Gardens. Dooner has plans to build a 100-bed wellness center for women on the undeveloped acreage behind the office park. (Stan Carroll/The Commercial Appeal) August 9, 2016 - Philanthropists Bill and Ellie Dooner reviews real estate documents with property manager Jeremy Turner (left) on site at the recently purchased Walnut Grove Office Gardens. The Dooners have plans to build a 100-bed wellness center for women on an undeveloped 9.6 acres adjacent to the office park. (Stan Carroll/The Commercial Appeal) August 9, 2016 - Philanthropists Bill and Ellie Dooner have purchased an undeveloped 9.6 acres (seen in background) behind the Walnut Grove Office Gardens with plans to build a 100-bed wellness center for women. (Stan Carroll/The Commercial Appeal)

By Thomas Bailey Jr. of The Commercial Appeal

A philanthropist has purchased nearly 10 acres at the south edge of Binghamton to build a 100-bed facility to provide treatment at no charge for women with drug and alcohol addictions.

“The most important thing is to put the brakes on some of the things they are doing at this point, using drugs or alcohol, and to see if they want to change their lives, ’’ said 84-year-old William J. “Bill’’ Dooner, himself a recovering alcoholic the past 61 years.

Dooner and his wife, Ellie, are establishing a nonprofit organization to build and operate The Healing Place of Memphis, which will use the 12-step recovery programs of Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous.

They purchased 14 acres from Wills & Wills for just over $1 million this summer at the south edge of Binghamton. Dooner estimates that the treatment facility to be built on the northernmost, 9.5 acres will cost $5 million to $6 million to build.

While the Dooners will financially support the construction and operation, the new nonprofit organization will depend on contributions from the public.

The 9.5 acres are undeveloped except for Urban Farms, the Binghampton Development Corp.-affiliated community garden. Urban Farms will be allowed to continue operating there.

The Dooners purchase includes the adjacent Walnut Grove Office Gardens immediately south of the undeveloped land. But the 4.5-acre office park at 3100 Walnut Grove will be separate from the women’s treatment facility, including separate access points.

The couple has retained Cushman & Wakefield/Commercial Advisors to manage the six-building, 47,074-square-foot office park and to explore how it can best be refreshed. Occupancy is less than 25 percent.

For now, the Dooners’ vision for the women’s treatment center remains a proposal. The project would require a rezoning; the land is now zoned for office use.

Memphis has a tremendous need for such a treatment center, said Michael Allen, president and chief executive of Catholic Charities of West Tennessee.

Catholic Charities has been forced to close three treatment centers over the past three years because primary support from the Department of Housing and Urban Development has dwindled, Allen said.

“Any long-standing transitional shelter in Memphis funded by HUD is at risk,’’ he said. “Some have closed and I suspect others will close in the future...

“So what Bill is proposing is important... I think he’s got the resources to do this, he’s got the community contacts to do it, and there’s a need,’’ Allen said.

Bill Dooner has experienced a rags-to-riches life. He grew up in poverty on the streets of New York, became an alcoholic by age 12, and by his early 20s bottomed out on Chicago's skid row.

An encounter there at age 23 with a Catholic priest, Ignatius D. McDermott, or "Father Mac,'' transformed Dooner, who has been sober ever since. He made his fortune building and selling 20 billboard companies, a chain of restaurants, hotels and other real estate.

The couple moved to Memphis 16 years ago to be near their daughter and son-in-law, Julie and Dr. Fred Azar, and two grandchildren.

The Healing Place of Memphis will be modeled after The Healing Place in Louisville, Kentucky.

The Louisville organization’s website (the healingplace.org) states:

“With 75 percent of our alumni remaining sober after one year, our success rate is five times the national average for recovery facilities... Today, over 3,500 individuals are leading productive lives and many are reunited with their families because of our unique approach to recovery. Our program relies on the assistance and guidance of its alumni to supplement traditional approaches to recovery.’’

Said Dooner, “It’s just going to be a women’s help center. But they will be able to live there... It’s not going to be a day facility. They will be 30-day to nine-month residents so we can deal with the whole person.’’

Two experienced managers from the The Healing Place in Louisville will move to Memphis to help direct the operation.

The Dooners have long been big supporters of Chicago’s McDermott Center, which is Chicago’s biggest not-for-profit treatment facility for adult detoxification, residential, and outpatient substance abuse treatment.

Dooner also owned two for-profit treatment centers, one for men and the other for women, in Astoria, Oregon, before selling them in 2012. “It got so difficult to fly’’ to Oregon,’’ he said. “Especially since Delta and Northwest (airlines) left here.’’

The two-year-old “Community Advisors’’ unit of Cushman & Wakefield/Commercial Advisors, headed by Greg Spillyards, is helping the Dooners with the endeavor. The group specializes in providing brokerage, property management, redevelopment and financing expertise in underserved and blighted core city neighborhoods.