A site on SE Grand Avenue will house up to 50 sobering beds as an alternative to jail or hospital ERs.  by Courtney Vaughn Multnomah County says its new 24-hour sobering center will be located in Portland’s Central Eastside Industrial district. On Thursday, county officials announced a pending building purchase at 1901 SE Grand. Property records show the site houses a roughly 24,000-square-foot warehouse.  An opening date for the new sobering and crisis stabilization center hasn’t been announced yet, but the center will house up to 50 beds. The county says the new site will serve as a permanent location for sobering and withdrawal management services, allowing intoxicated people to avoid jails or hospital emergency rooms. Law enforcement officers and first responders will transport people to the sobering center. A temporary Coordinated Care Pathway Center was opened in Southeast Portland last year, as a means of providing deflection services to people who accept treatment over jail.  The new center is geared specifically toward short-term drug and alcohol withdrawal, but those who utilize the center can be connected with local recovery and treatment services. A previous sobering center and transport service in Portland operated for more than 30 years before closing in late 2019. Staff at the center said they could no longer handle the severe medical and mental health needs of people arriving at the center. In a statement provided to the Mercury, Multnomah County says they'll make sure staff have the tools and resources to address the effects of modern street drugs. "While a variety of reasons were identified for closure of the center, one of the key reasons was a marked increase in opioid and methamphetamine use in a center that had operated for decades for alcohol sobering. Since the closure, we’ve also experienced the arrival of fentanyl in our community," the statement reads. The new Sobering and Stabilization Center will address the needs we’re facing right now for both alcohol and drug use by having medical and behavioral health staff who are able to assess, triage and provide the appropriate transfer or sobering and stabilization care for the substances we are seeing now." Multnomah County says the forthcoming center is part of a larger plan informed by sobering centers in other cities, and was developed according to clinical guidelines and best practices established by the American Society of Addiction Medicine. County Commissioner Julia Brim-Edwards, who led the initial project plan, said finding a replacement sobering center has been a top concern. “Since my first day in office, I have heard from first responders the urgent need for more options for people intoxicated on the streets, beyond taking people to the emergency room, to jail or leaving them on the street,” Brim-Edwards stated in Thursday’s announcement. “Bringing sobering beds online this spring in the Pathway Center, and today announcing a site for a permanent sobering and crisis stabilization center are significant steps forward in community safety and livability.”