A long-vacant building on Monterey’s waterfront has a new owner and a new life.

The long dormant office building at 245 Washington St. in Monterey, right by the wharf parking lot entrance, has quietly come back to life in the past few weeks. It marks the beginning of something new: a hub for recovery, whether from pain, addiction or both.

In May, Pacific Rehabilitation & Pain, which operates clinics in Monterey and Salinas, acquired the building for $2.15 million. In August, it opened its Recovery Center on the waterfront with offices for its own doctors, but also offices for other doctors and nonprofits.

One of those nonprofits is Sun Street Centers, which is still moving in. Another is Central Coast Overdose Prevention, which was founded in 2020 and now has its first brick-and-mortar location. Two months ago, CCODP had just two doctors on staff – Casey Grover and Reb Close, the husband-and-wife doctors who founded it – but since then, they’ve hired three more.

A few years ago, Grover and Close, who both worked in the emergency room at CHOMP, approached Dr. Salar Deldar, a CHOMP physician who founded Pacific Rehabilitation & Pain, about the logistics of starting a practice. That led Deldar to offer them space in his clinic on Cass Street in Monterey for them to work in.

When Deldar saw the building go up for sale earlier this year, a vision began to take shape. “I just thought, ‘We need to make this happen,’” he says. What “this” is, Deldar says, is a “synergistic hub” of specialists who work with a lot of the same patients in different capacities.

“It’s the coolest thing, it just kept developing,” he says. He adds that if it’s a feel-good story now, “It’s only going to feel better with time.”