Community Living North Bay is now able to meet the needs of its clients and their families all under one roof in a brand new, fully accessible building on Wallace Road.
The organization provides programs and services to people of all ages, living with developmental disabilities.
Hundreds of people, including clients, staff and community partners gathered to celebrate the official grand opening with a ribbon cutting ceremony.
Craig Dellandrea is appreciative that a room has been dedicated to his parents, Frank and Jean Dellandrea.
"This building was named after my parents in honour of the work they had done helping to build the association here in North Bay. They were part of the first group of people in 1954 who started the organization in the basement of St. Andrew’s church. They had a little school there. They started with five students. My sister was the fifth,” shared Dellandrea.
“They would think this was pretty glorious. It’s a beautiful building. It’s a real testament to all the work that has gone on in North Bay over more than 60 years. I think they would be very happy with what’s happened here.”
Ninety-two-year-old Bert Marsden is another founding member. He was the organization’s first president.
“This is fabulous. It was so much work at first with just a handful of people. Look at it now,” said Marsden as he pointed across the lobby.
“It’s hard to believe. It’s beautiful. You know the most difficult thing when we started was getting parents to admit that they had a disabled child. It was hard to get them to want to join, but we kept at it, and kept at it.”
Community Living North Bay currently has a client base of around 600, with another 270 on a waiting list.
“The most pressing need is that we weren’t accessible. We were on the top floor and we support people with disabilities, so that had to change. We did own this building, and this space that we’re in now was a warehouse. It was originally a sheltered workshop but closed about 10 years ago,” explained Executive Director Jennifer Valenti.
“It took a long time, there were other priorities but this finally floated to the top. We needed an accessible service, and the fact that we owned the building just made it the right time to centralize our services and make it accessible and more affordable because we were renting all of our locations. Once this mortgage is paid, those dollars can be turned back into supports for people.
“We were very, very modest. Even as we went along, we added things we hadn’t included before such as paving. We wanted to take the occupancy costs that we have currently, and be able to use that to pay for a mortgage without raising those costs.”
The hope is to take another million off the mortgage through its Capacity Building Campaign. It has raised $400,000 toward that goal.
“The money is actually going toward the build. Once everything is paid for, the quarter of a million dollars we save annually by centralizing our offices will go back into services,” said campaign co-chair Darlene Brooks.
“You can imagine the three or four other locations we had, we were paying rent and parking. There’s somewhere between 70 and 80 staff in this one location, all under different services and umbrellas. So the savings with parking, the savings with travel, all add up.”
Mailers have gone out asking for campaign contributions.
“We recently sent out almost 500 letters asking families, people in the community, our suppliers, to donate $1,000 each and we’re calling that ‘The Power of One,'” said Brooks.
“We’re going to keep going until we reach our goal. There is no end date.”