Officials working to bring the Dream Centre to life have celebrated this month, as the new facility was approved to be built in downtown red deer.

Originally, the proposal had been shot down but the City's Subdivision and development appeal board overruled that denial and the Red Deer Dream home will now be built at the former 'Lotus Night Club' location in downtown Red Deer.

Dream-Centre Co-Chair Wes Giesbrecht said this is a victory to celebrate, and that they are looking forward to serving the red deer community.

"For the last 18 months or so, we've been strategizing to get this Dream Centre to take some shape. We went through a couple of processes where Red Deer's MPC (Municipal Planning Committee) denied the application based on four points they felt were not conforming to the downtown core," Giesbrecht said. 

"We're celebrating this victory, but at the same time, we're humbly submitting the fact that we are here to serve. The Dream Centre itself and what it represents is serving in leadership. We want to serve our community and tackle this problem of addictions."

The Dream Centre is a faith-based, 40, live-in recovery program. After participants work through the 49-day program, they will be helped to find transitional housing or employment, depending on where they are at.

Giesbrecht said the facility would contain many supports, including

"We're trying to restore hope back to a community that's broken," Giesbrecht said. 

"The reality is we all have to work at this from a bunch of different points, I'm told that it's called a multi-faceted approach. We offer needles, we offer a place to inject, we offer housing, we offer soup kitchens, we offer everything but we don't offer hope in the recovery process."

Giesbrecht said that to him, the Dream Centre inspires hope and he hopes that others will see it too and will begin to try to feel the influence of wanting to live a different life.