Tim Harty, The Business Times 

Seeking permanence and a place where its therapists and clients can thrive led Thrive Marriage & Family Counseling to say good-bye to leasing and hello to owning.

Thrive Marriage & Family Counseling’s founder Chantel Landeros bought the building, a 117-year-old house at 827 Grand Ave. in downtown Grand Junction, renovated it to meet the practice’s needs, and Thrive moved into it May 26, then hosted an open house June 21.

Now, the practice that Chantel Landeros started in 2019, when it was just her flying solo, can become what Landeros envisioned.

“I wanted to create a practice,” Landeros said, “that therapists wanted to work at, they wanted to thrive in and have long careers in, being able to support their families while also having the balance to be able to continue to support our clients and the community the way that we do.

“And then on the client side, I really wanted to create a place where clients felt proud to come to therapy. I wanted to take a level of shame out of getting mental health care and support. And so I really just am trying to create an environment for people to just feel like they can come and move from really surviving to thriving in their life without coming to always be at the bottom, to be able to start doing better in their life.”

The building is 1,462 square feet with five offices, and Landeros said it’s smaller than previous places the practice leased. And in this case, that’s better.

“It’s just better utilized space,” she said. “Everywhere I leased, I had a whole lot of dead space that we couldn’t really utilize. So, every square inch of this place is used for what we need it to.”

Landeros wanted that interior to be inviting and comfortable for clients, and the renovation that took place from the beginning of April until late May took it into account.

“It was like a whole cosmetic overhaul,” she said. “I mean, literally everything, every wall got touched, every piece of flooring got touched. And then exterior-wise, we redid the entire outside and the deck.”

The exterior was stuccoed, and the deck was replaced.

Thrive Marriage & Family Counseling has nine therapists, and Landeros said the practice has been pretty steady at eight to nine therapists for the past three years.

The new location won’t allow that number to increase, and Landeros is OK with that. She’s not looking to grow the practice in the immediate future.

“I think that the way that we do things right now works really well,” she said. “But I’m only six years into the business, so who knows what the future will hold. Owning a building was like a threshold, and so I don’t know what’s next after this.”

Landeros said the practice is “always wanting to help support more clients,” so the therapists run schedules where they don’t have a lengthy wait list. She said that’s “a really big benefit to therapy in general, because a lot of times you call places, and there’s a really long wait list. 

“So, when we get pushed for a wait list, we get creative and add more spots instead of making clients wait to see us.”

Landeros added new clients will see Thrive Marriage & Family Counseling’s focus is relationships.

“We really want to make sure that relationships are healed and healthy, so that individuals can be healed and healthy,” she said.