From church services to community services

Jeff Green | Nov 11, 2010

If all goes well, the abandoned Grace United Church in Sydenham will have a new life as a community centre within the next year or two.

The Board of Directors of Southern Frontenac Community Services has decided to move forward with the project, and is now up to the United Church Presbytery to determine what kind of sale/lease arrangement would be most suitable for the building.

“The plan is for us to bring all of our services together under one roof,” said Southern Frontenac Community Services Executive Director David Townsend. “Currently we rent office space in Sydenham (The Rural Visions Centre) and the manse from the United Church in Harrowsmith where we run our adult day programs, and when I looked at the operating costs for the church, it comes out to less.”

But there will be substantial costs, about $300,000, involved in turning the church into office and program space for a community services agency. The pace and scale of the renovations will depend on the success the agency has in obtaining grants and doing fundraising for the project.

SFCS has made applications for funding to a couple of sources, including an AVIVA Community fund application, which required a show of community support. “We did pretty well with AVIVA,” Townsend said, “finishing 20 out of 199 applicants, but only the top ten move on to the next stage.”

An application went in last week for a $112,000 Trillium Foundation Grant, and other sources are being looked at as well.

It is not too difficult to see how the church can be turned into a viable headquarters for SFCS. The basement is already being used for playgroups by the Ontario Early Years Centre and could be easy to turned into a multi-use space for children's and seniors' programming. It could also serve as a dining room for a monthly diners' club and as a location where hot meals or frozen meals could be prepared for the Meals on Wheels program that Southern Frontenac Community Services offers, since there is already a fully equipped kitchen off the main room.

There is some existing office space on the main level, and the thinking is that the main sanctuary could be renovated into office space in addition to keeping space available for public gatherings, meetings, or even community-based theatrical productions.

“The structure of the building is sound,” said David Townsend, “that's the main thing.”

Embarking on the new project is a tall order for the agency, since as recently as this past June, Townsend reported to the agency’s Annual General Meeting that finances were a continuing issue that needs to be addressed.

One of those financial issues has been sorted out, since a commitment has been made by the City of Kingston to fund the case manager for several family services programs until the end of next year, a cost that the agency had been covering. The case manager administers a rent and utility bank, and supports the 21 identified homeless families in the township. “Thus far, seven of the families have found housing,” said David Townsend.

The other area of financial concern was the licensed home daycare program.

SFCS is hoping that a campaign to find up to seven new providers to increase the number of homes offering licensed childcare to 15 would not only mean that the 20 children on a waiting list would be able to access licensed care in their own communities, but that it would enable that program to break even as well.

All in all, it's a busy time at Southern Frontenac Community Service, and it promises to get even busier next year as the Grace United Church project ramps up.