By Andra Bryan Stefanoni
news@joplinglobe.com
PITTSBURG, Kan. — At a time that Family Resource Center Executive Director Monica Murnan has described as the center’s hour of greatest need, a series of life preservers has been tossed into the water.
Now, it appears the center will stay afloat.
Since its beginning almost 15 years ago, the Family Resource Center has grown to serve 400 children, employ 95 people with an annual payroll of $1 million, and bring $1.9 million in grants and contracts into the community.
But last fall, the ship had begun to sink: Murnan announced that the center desperately needed funding and a new location, citing the poor condition of the aging building and the cost to maintain it as making it nearly impossible to continue operations.
Housed in the former Lincoln Elementary School at 1700 Locust Ave., the center opened in 1995 as a non-profit collaboration among Pittsburg USD 250, Mount Carmel Regional Medical Center and Pittsburg State University.
The collaborative nature of the center also has played a key role in its salvation.
One life preserver was thrown out last fall when the Bicknell Family Trust donated the former 40,000-square-foot Envision building at 1600 N. Walnut — known to longtime community residents as the old census building.
But how to pay for the estimated $2.25 million in demolition and reconstruction the site would need to provide for the center’s child-focused programming as well as the adult and community services offered there?
Through fund-raisers and other sources, some $1.2 million was raised, according to Murnan.
It climbed on another life preserver recently when Murnan learned the initial estimate of $2.25 million had decreased to $1.9 million.
More good news came last week, when Murnan sealed the deal with the Pittsburg School District’s board of education to cost-share several programs.
“In November, the board agreed to look at some clever ways to share some costs and realign some programs, enhance some programs,” she said.
The board finalized some of those details last week, which include the center serving a specific group of children with special needs, and keeping utilities in the district’s name to ensure reduced costs through an energy savings plan.
The City Commission on Tuesday approved a request from the Economic Development Advisory Committee to provide a $395,000 forgivable loan. In return, the center will clear the land at its current site after moving and will deed over the entire city block to the City of Pittsburg.
Economic Development Director Mark Turnbull said plans are to explore the construction of single-family homes there that would reinvest in the neighborhood.
“It’s a big exciting thing,” Murnan said. “We have been singing this economic development song for six or seven years, and it’s a hard thing to shift thinking on, but now there is a different attitude. The city hears from employers all the time now, that this is something they have to have when the come into a city.”
Upon receipt of the forgivable loan, the Family Resource Center must meet economic benchmarks, maintain a level of employees, and keep $1.5 million coming into the community through contract and grant dollars. In addition, it must add 20 child-care slots.
Turnbull said the center’s plight is considered an economic development issue for numerous reasons. Among them: Parents of children enrolled there are employed at more than 150 area workplaces.
The center also houses 10 community programs and subsidizes 156 child-care providers in Bourbon, Crawford, and Cherokee Counties through grant funding.
“We now believe we have enough money to begin. The only thing we’re still looking for is money for a parking lot and cabinetry, and we could live without that if we absolutely had to, although we will keep our eyes open for a creative source,” Murnan said.
