Cops’ Move Delayed Again

Hopefully people weren’t holding their breath when Nevada-Lidgerwood COPS volunteers officials set a date for moving into a new building.

They would have suffocated by now.

“We’ve set the date like four times, and each time it’s been like, ‘Well, no, not now,”’ said NevaWood President Shirley Henry.

Volunteers had hoped to move into the new building at the intersection of Addison and Wellesley on Sept. 6. But construction delays slowed the process.

“Now we’ve decided not to set a date,” Henry said. “As the time to move in gets closer, then we might set one.”

Until then, volunteers will continue to work out of a temporary office on the main floor of NorthTown Mall between The Barking Frog and Baskin-Robbins.

Volunteers moved there in October after their temporary lease at Franklin Park Mall expired. NevaWood was in that mall from July 1995 until August 1996.

The new volunteer station will set up shop in a 5,200-square-foot building. Organizations from all over the community are helping with the project.

The bulk of the help is being done by workers from Spokane’s Educational Service District 101. That program oversees the federal government’s AmeriCorps National Service program.

The national service program targets young people between the ages of 16 and 25 who are interested in careers in building trades.

Many of the workers in the ESD 101 program dropped out of high school and are working on getting their GED certificates.

Some have graduated from college and are using ESD 101 as a way to gain experience in construction, said building supervisor Shannon Anderson.

“This one (COPS shop) is kind of a nice one to work on,” Anderson said. “There’s a lot to it, so these guys are getting some good experience putting it together.

“And the nice thing about it is that we get to help the COPS volunteers on something that they’ve been trying to get for a long time,” he said.

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