BOWLING GREEN, Ohio — The Children’s Resource Center has cut the ribbon on a new $7.6 million building in Bowling Green that roughly doubles the room available for children in a mental-health crisis — but no child can stay there yet. The center will open once the Ohio Department of Behavioral Health certifies it, the Lake Erie Inquiry reported this week, drawing on reporting by BG Independent News and the center’s own announcements.
The R. Anthony Marcson Center sits behind the center’s offices at 1045 Klotz Road. It has 16 rooms — 10 crisis beds for a child who needs help right away, and six rooms for longer stays of up to three months, the Lake Erie Inquiry reported. The unit it replaces had eight beds. When it opens, the center will take children ages 6 to 17 from Wood County and nearby areas, the center says, according to the Lake Erie Inquiry.
The ribbon cutting was a long time coming. The center had set it for Aug. 10, then put it off twice, the Lake Erie Inquiry reported, and even now the building needs the state’s sign-off before a child can sleep in it.
The money behind the building tells its own story. The center cost $7.6 million, according to figures reported by the Lake Erie Inquiry: Ohio’s mental health department awarded $6,646,703 of that in August 2023 out of federal pandemic relief money, and a state Youth Resiliency Fund grant added $1 million. Those two grants alone cover the cost, with matching money from the Wood County mental health board on top — no amount for the board’s share has been given, the Lake Erie Inquiry reported.
The building is named for the center’s founder, R. Anthony Marcson, known as Tony, who retired in 2005 and died in 2022, according to the Lake Erie Inquiry.
For Wood County families, the stakes are in the bed count. A child in crisis who cannot be placed nearby can end up waiting in an emergency room or traveling far from home; a 16-room unit purpose-built for crisis care and short residential stays is designed to keep that care in the county, close to the families and schools the center already serves.
What happens next is entirely in Columbus. The Ohio Department of Behavioral Health’s certification is the last gate between a finished, furnished building and the first child it was built for — and neither the center nor the reporting around the ribbon cutting has put a date on when that approval will come.