Open House Ministries has cleared space for a new Family Resource Center that it wants to build just north of its family homeless shelter in downtown Vancouver.
On Monday morning, crews hired by Open House demolished a ramshackle, three-story former rental house on West 13th Street in order to make way for the new facility.
“Removing the building that occupied the corner lot of our campus is part of a plan to revitalize the property to better serve our resident families,” Executive Director Wayne Garlington said in a statement released Monday afternoon.
The envisioned 12,000-square-foot building will feature a great room for recreation and meeting uses, classrooms, a kitchen and program offices.
Open House children will have a safe new place to play in a blighted corner of the city, and parents will be able to take parenting, job training and other important skill-building classes that will help them move forward in life.
Open House is a Christian shelter on West 12th Street that houses nearly 100 people. Garlington was not available for an interview on Monday, but development director Judith McMorine and consultant Mike Westby of Westby Associates both said no new housing is planned as part of the family resource center project, and the number of Open House residents won’t increase. Westby said that means the project should not trigger the city’s social service siting ordinance, which seeks to spread services for poor and homeless people beyond the downtown core.
“It’s not increasing capacity beyond what’s already permitted,” Westby said. “It’s to better serve the people that Open House already serves.”
According to the Monday statement, a capital campaign has generated about $1 million toward the $2.6 million project.
To learn more, contact Open House at 360-737-0300 or visit http://sheltered.org.
There’s no timeline yet or forecast for approval and construction of this project.
McMorine said the demolished house had been vacant for months, and Open House staff worked hard to place everyone there in new apartments.
“We found housing for anybody who needed new housing,” she said. “I’m very proud of our staff.”
