From Grief to Gift –
June 6, 2018 – Jon Orens closed his first sale 30 years ago at 3900 Ford Rd., selling a property in Northwest Philly’s Park Plaza condos. Since then, he’s made a name for himself as a real estate developer, building in just about every neighborhood the city has to offer. Orens visited that same Ford Road complex again last week for a different reason: the soft opening of an an addiction recovery center named for his son, who died from a drug overdosein November 2016. The Daniel J. Orens Center for Life is the first of its kind in Philadelphia, advocates believe, in that it’s a collaborative of several different nonprofits that will share the same physical space to offer services. It will specialize in serving veterans, people with mental illnesses and people reentering society after incarceration. There will also be therapy dogs. Designed to serve about 50 clients at any given time, the six collective offices will offer intensive outpatient therapy, case management, 12-step meetings, 24-hour crisis management, housing referrals and workforce training. There’ll be a computer room on site for resume workshops, and a closet with clothes that clients can borrow for job interviews.
