Catholic Charities Spokane to create new center

Catholic Charities Spokane will soon have a new center near downtown Spokane.

The nonprofit has agreed to purchase a three-story, 17,000-square-foot building at 12 E. Fifth Ave. and turn it into the new Catholic Charities Spokane Family Services Center.

This will be the first time in its 94-year history that Catholic Charities will consolidate 11 of its 15 programs into one location.

“We’re very excited about this project,” said Executive Director Rob McCann. The agency not only will have most of its services under one roof, he said, but its new center will be near three other Catholic Charities programs — St. Anne’s Children and Family Center, St. Margaret’s Shelter and the House of Charity.

“We’re going to create a Catholic Charities campus right on the lower South Hill,” McCann said. “It’s great for our staff and we’ll achieve ‘one-stop shopping’ for our clients.”

Owned by Sacred Heart Medical Center, the building at East Fifth Avenue is known as the Cowley Professional Building and has been used as doctors’ offices in recent years. Catholic Charities will pay $2.2 million for the building and will spend another $1 million for renovations, scheduled to begin in January. The agency — which doesn’t have to make payments to Sacred Heart until 2009 — hopes to move in by next summer.

To pay for the building, Catholic Charities hopes to obtain local, state and federal grants as well as private grants from corporations and foundations. The nonprofit has no plans to ask local Catholics for financial contributions this year, said McCann.

“The diocese and the average Catholic in the pew is focused on raising $10 million for the Chapter 11 reorganization plan,” he said. “We don’t want to get in the way of that and confuse people.”

For nearly 40 years, Catholic Charities has been leasing office space from the Diocese of Spokane at the Catholic Pastoral Center, also known as the chancery, 1023 W. Riverside Ave. When the diocese was forced to sell the chancery as a result of Chapter 11 bankruptcy, Catholic Charities started looking for a new home.

After exploring options in downtown Spokane, the agency turned to Sacred Heart Medical Center. The hospital not only offers medical assistance at the House of Charity, said McCann, it also has donated generously to Catholic Charities and provided the land for St. Anne’s Children and Family Center.

Until next summer’s move, Catholic Charities will keep its offices on the first floor of the chancery — now owed by Centennial Properties Inc., a real estate development subsidiary of Cowles Co., which also publishes The Spokesman-Review.

McCann said Catholic Charities pays about $2,000 a month to rent the space — the same price it paid for decades when the building was owned by the Diocese of Spokane.

Nonetheless, Catholic Charities spends about $109,000 annually leasing office space in various locations throughout Spokane for 11 of its programs. By bringing all these services together into one center, “the agency can ultimately use that pool of rental dollars to further serve those in need instead of writing monthly lease checks,” McCann said.

The new Catholic Charities Family Services Center will house the following programs: Childbirth and Parenting Alone, senior services, immigration services, counseling and case management, foster grandparent, Christmas Bureau, housing social services, Catholic Housing Communities, emergency assistance voucher , senior nutrition and the leadership and accreditation team.