On time, and under budget.
That's the bottom line from Community Living on its construction project, that began 11 months ago.
"Being very conservative with our money, our budget was 4.2 million dollars. We are probably going to land between 3.4 and 3.5 million," said Executive Director Jennifer Valenti.
"We also have a capital campaign. Our target is one million dollars. If we reach that, it will be 2.5 million, so way under what we expected to borrow at the bank. We wanted the mortgage payment to be the same or less than what we were paying downtown because we don't want our occupancy costs to go up. The idea was to be more efficient so that once this is paid, that money can go back into services for people."
Retired director of Support Services, Darlene Brooks is now managing the Capacity Building Campaign.
"We are trying to raise one million dollars to go toward the construction costs of this building, and we are at approximately $400,000 of the one million. In the next few weeks, we're going to be looking at a public media launch to get our families, the community, and suppliers involved in helping us raise the remaining $600,000," explained Brooks.
"The three main pillars of the campaign is capacity, efficiencies, and the final one, which is really important to the people we serve, is accessibility. The building is all on one level, so no stairs, nothing to climb, so that is really important to us too."
The goal from the very beginning was to have a modest build at its existing property at the corner of Wallace Road and Commerce Court.
"We had this building where we had a workshop which was closed about 10 years ago, so we had a big vacant space. We looked at doing renovations here, in the old part of the building and providing an addition, so that all of the services can be under one roof. That includes our administration offices that were downtown, a building that was on Chippewa Street that has been sold, and there are already offices here," said Valenti.
"We wanted to provide an addition, pull it together so it looked good, but the main point was that it was going to be affordable. We built in a large contingency. Initially, it was very bare bones, but as we went along and we found things were going smoothly, we were able to add pieces in that we hadn't added in before."
Community Living North Bay began as a small organization 63 years ago. Today it supports about 600 children and adults, with intellectual disabilities.
"As our programs grew, we just ended up being spread out, and we never really had one location for everyone to provide services. So it really became evident in the last couple of years when we grew quite a bit, and our offices downtown were not accessible. That was really the first push that we have to do something," said Valenti.
"Because of Bill 148 we had a kitchen which was a training facility for people with disabilities, but with the new legislation we're not allowed to operate a training program, only a college or university can do that. So we've had to close that part of the business, and starting April 1st we're going to be opening as a regular for-profit restaurant. The hope is that we will make enough profit to pay for the expenses, and any profits that we make can be directly turned back into supports for people, and it will be a revenue stream that's not dependent on the government. It's a place where people can come from the community and learn about Community Living and the supports we provide. I think that piece is really valuable."
Valenti says the project was long overdue.
"Having a nice new building for people to work in, and a building for people to come to receive services, I think shows the community that people with disabilities have a lot of value. And because it's a community building, we have a restaurant that we really want to promote, we have a beautiful conference room that we're willing to share, so we want to bring people in as well. We've been here 63 years, people don't really know what we do."
It will take a few weeks for all 80 employees to gradually move into the building.
Albert Faubert receives support from Community Living. A maintenance support worker for over five years, Faubert has been helping staff with their move.
"It's all brand new. It's nice. I like helping everybody. I like helping them out if they need boxes," said Faubert.
An official grand opening ceremony is planned for May.
