In the ghost town that encompasses a long-shuttered addiction recovery campus on Long Island, city officials see a potential solution to an opioid epidemic that has worsened since the bridge to those services was torn down.

The Wu administration took reporters on a tour of the island on Wednesday, pointing out the 11 buildings that could be retrofitted to house a new recovery campus in four years, one that would improve upon the more “fragmented” and “siloed” services that were offered there in the past.

“What we’re looking for is to create something that’s truly synergistic with what is available on the mainland,” said Dr. Bisola Ojikuto, executive director of the Boston Public Health Commission. “We want to build a continuum of care for people.”

Mayor Michelle Wu said the city is envisioning the new campus as less of an overnight emergency shelter and more of a comprehensive campus that serves the needs of its patients.

This could include treatment for someone with substance-use addiction, such as recovery and counseling, but it would also extend to workforce development, to prepare for their transition back into society, Wu said.

The city is feeling the “brunt” of not having substance-use and mental health services available on the island today, Ojikuto said, possibly alluding to the drug trafficking and violence that has worsened this summer at Massachusetts Avenue and Melnea Cass Boulevard, the epicenter of Boston’s opioid epidemic.

The Long Island bridge was closed in 2014, and later torn down. Without an access point, the recovery campus was forced to shut down as well.

A new bridge is estimated to cost more than $100 million, and while the city secured a critical permit this month to move the project forward, it still needs permits from the state Office of Coastal Zone Management and U.S. Coast Guard.

Wu said the need is most evident at Mass and Cass, an area long known for open-air drug dealing and homeless encampments, but a recovery campus would benefit “families across every neighborhood in Boston and across every city in the commonwealth.”

Whether the new campus would be the primary place of referral for people in need of services at Mass and Cass is still being determined, Ojikuto said. Today, the city works to refer people from that troubled area to a number of places, including detox treatment centers, low-threshold housing, and different providers, she said.

The problem, she said, is “that we don’t have enough resources available for people and that’s one of the things that we’re hoping that building Long Island will alleviate.”

“We would love to have resources available that would alleviate some of the stress and what’s occurring in the Mass and Cass area,” Ojikuto added.

The mayor pitched the island’s potential through her visit to its thriving summer camp, which provided a stark contrast to the dilapidated buildings that officials say will be rehabilitated to house the new 35-acre treatment center.

The Boston Public Health Commission, which leases the city-owned land, visits the old buildings twice a week, but that doesn’t prevent break-ins from people trespassing on the island. Animals also make their way into the structures, which have been heavily damaged over the 10 years of abandonment, city officials said.

Wu said $40 million has been appropriated to stabilize the project’s 11 principle buildings in the city budget, a process her team said will start over the holidays when the work goes out to bid. Construction would start in the spring.

City officials determined several other buildings were not salvageable. The structures would be torn down after the other buildings are rehabbed.

While those who toured the island Wednesday agreed that the city has a lot of work to do to address its homelessness and opioid epidemic, they stopped short of comparing Boston’s situation to what some other major U.S. cities are dealing with.

“We have a problem but it is solvable, solvable, solvable,” said Charles Gagnon, president and CEO of Volunteers of America of Massachusetts. “It’s not Los Angeles, 60,000 homeless people. It’s not San Francisco. We have a group of people that need our help, and we can recreate the continuum of care.”