Oct 25, 2023
BestSelf Behavioral Health is 80% to goal on a $12.5 million capital campaign, thanks to a major naming rights gift from the Bieler Family Foundation announced Oct. 25.
The campaign, which was increased from $10.5 million to account for inflation, supports the expansion and move of the Child Advocacy Center, which will be housed along with BestSelf’s headquarters offices at 899 Main St., Buffalo.
BestSelf has been working on the $20 million project for several years at the former headquarters of Lifetime Health on the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus.
The gift from the Bieler Family Foundation includes naming rights for the 67,000-square-foot building, which is slated to open early next summer. The amount was not disclosed. With total assets of $11.4 million, the foundation last year made grants and gifts totaling nearly $2 million.
Scott Bieler, the president and CEO of West Herr Automotive Group, has been a prolific philanthropist in recent years, with naming rights gifts awarded to Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center, the Rural Outreach Center in Aurora and the new Vive Shelter, a program of Jericho Road Community Health Center.
In recognition of his business and philanthropic success, Bieler was inducted earlier this month into Buffalo Business First’s Western New York Business Hall of Fame.
Other funding for the project came from Erie County, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, M&T Bank, KeyBank, Foundation 214, the Highmark Blue Cross Blue Shield Blue Fund, the John R. Oishei Foundation and the Wendt Foundation.
The Child Advocacy Center provides a range of services to children and families following physical and sexual assault. Based at 556 Franklin St., the CAC expanded into a space at the Clement Mansion campus on Delaware Avenue in 2018.
Moving to a larger space on the second floor of 899 Main St. will allow all services to be consolidated at the same site, improving collaboration between partners that include BestSelf, Crisis Services, Oishei Children’s Hospital and the Erie County Sheriff’s Department.
The first floor will house administrative offices and a coffee shop, with additional administrative space on the third floor and additional meeting space, a community training center and a break room for staff in the basement level.