How design makes rehab more serene

Room 9500 is the bottom rung at Beit T’Shuvah, the first stop for male addicts newly arrived from prison, the hospital or the streets. Six rookies at a time inhabit this snug dormitory as they adjust to life in rehab. For years, 9500 marked a dark and dreary start toward recovery — its windows blocked by bunk beds and dressers, the blue carpet stained and shabby. Longtime residents have called their stint in the room an “initiation,” and not in a good way.

On a recent afternoon, Drew Marr and Nick Martinez found their initiation would be a lot more pleasant.

“Wow, this is awesome,” Martinez, 19, said as he stepped into a fully made-over space furnished with new storage cubbies and polished hardwood floors, designer bed linens and a fresh coat of muted teal paint. “I feel like I’m in a hotel.”

Martinez and Marr, 27, have interior designers Jenifer Porter and Kelley Edwards to thank. “We tried to create a calm, quiet space,” Edwards said. “This is such a crucial time for the residents. We wanted to open up the room and give them something classic and comfortable.”

Porter and Edwards are two of the 70 local designers who have renovated rooms at Beit T’Shuvah this year as part of a charitable effort to give the Los Angeles addiction treatment center a much-needed facelift. Over four months, teams of decorators donated their time, talent and supplies to transform the facility’s 40-plus primary-care rooms into havens they hope will aid residents as they strive for wellness.

Organized by Heidi Bendetson, a designer herself and founder of the nonprofit Designed From the Heart, with help from entrepreneur Rhonda Snyder, the dramatic makeover will be revealed to the public in an open-house fete on July 12.

The design project has been an unexpected gift for the landmark residential rehab and synagogue, said Rabbi Mark Borovitz, Beit T’Shuvah’s spiritual leader. And it couldn’t have come at a more apt time: The institution is celebrating its 25th anniversary.

“This project is in keeping with our mission of letting people know that they matter,” Borovitz said. “It’s a way of telling the residents, ‘Yeah, you’ve made mistakes. You’ve come here at the absolute bottom of your life, but don’t think that you don’t matter.’ It’s our statement of belief in them.”

Bendetson and Snyder pulled the enterprise together at almost no cost to Beit T’Shuvah, which is the only Jewish-run treatment center in the country. They enlisted designers through professional contacts and word-of-mouth, giving recruits only a loose set of criteria to guide their work: You must raise all the funds and materials for your room. The room must be durable enough to support a high turnover of residents. The style shouldn’t be too ritzy or over-the-top — it should be a place of respite for residents slogging through the tough first phases of sobriety.

“The main thing we said to them was we wanted it to be a comfortable space that was therapeutic, that’s good for healing,” Bendetson said. “I’ve been blown away by everything the designers did.”

Before the project began at Beit T’Shuvah’s Venice Boulevard campus in early March, the primary-care units, which each house two residents for four to six months at a time, hadn’t been updated since the center moved to its current home near Culver City in 1999. The bedrooms were dingy and disorganized, with drawings etched into the walls by a parade of former residents. The bathroom tiles were cracked and smeared with a stubborn patina of soap scum.

Facilities manager Craig Miller stripped out the old wiring and furniture, and epoxy-coated the shower stalls. Then the designers came in with their painters, contractors and friends to fashion the new installations.

The renovation was carried out in five blocks of about eight rooms each, while temporarily displaced residents bunked with their peers. In each room, designers had three weeks to complete their work. At the end of each three-week period, residents were welcomed back to their transformed living spaces amid a clutch of cameras clicking rapidly to capture their wide-eyed disbelief, their open mouths, their heartfelt exclamations of, “Oh my God!”

Karen Greenberg said she was “in awe” when she first stepped into her redesigned room two months ago. The powder-blue walls, seagrass carpet and capiz-shell chandelier reminded her of a seaside spa, she recalled.

Greenberg, 38, landed at Beit T’Shuvah in 2008 for a methamphetamine addiction. When she returned for another stay this year, she was given the same room. “It was so messy and chaotic, but I had to humble myself and accept it,” Greenberg said. “Then I found out they were going to redo it, and the designers were truly a blessing.”

Heide Ziecker, Sarah Moritz and Alex Fuller gave Greenberg and her roommate plenty of drawer space to hide the heaps of belongings strewn around the floor. Ziecker had custom storage beds built by Meridith Baer Home, where she works, and obtained two sleek, forest-patterned armchairs from Janus et Cie.

“This is a room that I can really call home,” Greenberg said. “It’s so peaceful and a safe space for us. It’s not easy being back here, but this room helps me get through my day.”

The residents aren’t the only ones to be touched by the experience. Ziecker said she felt privileged to have a hand in a project that could help change lives. “I’m so excited thinking about the people who are going to be in this room for years to come and how this might be a bright spot in an otherwise difficult struggle,” she said.

Bendetson said that’s how she felt when she participated in a similar charitable design project at Good Shepherd, a women’s homeless shelter downtown, in May 2011. Until that point, her career as an interior designer had been fairly standard. But after remaking a room for a woman she’d never met, she yearned for more work that would lift her spirits so profoundly.