Bert Caldwell: Hillyard ready to ante up for the future

From the clinic in the front to the penny-ante poker game in the back, the Northeast Community Center is every square foot a social services hub.

But Executive Director Jean Farmer says the crowded facility delivers far more than Head Start and hot meals. She estimates the center’s classrooms, clinics and meeting rooms are indirectly responsible for at least $6 million in economic activity in the Hillyard area, one of Spokane’s poorest.

Farmer wants to increase production, in an economic manner of speaking, but needs more space on the factory floor. How much bigger the center gets depends on how much she can raise, and she hopes to tap the city’s capital market Friday morning with a fund-raising breakfast.

Her goal is $6 million in public and private money that could almost double the center’s present size. Plans call for 14,000 square feet on the main floor, 10,000 square feet below grade and, if the dollars are there, another 10,000 square feet upstairs that would be unfinished, saving dollars up front and later short-circuiting the serial expansions that have characterized the facility’s growth since it opened its doors in 1982.

The ebb and flow of space availability has affected center programs from the outset.

The original facility had 24,000 square feet of space dedicated to Spokane Neighborhood Action Programs, Spokane Parks Department youth and senior programs, a well-child clinic, and the Hillyard Branch of the Spokane Public Library. A child-care program moved out early on because the space was too small to make the program cost-effective.

The library is now housed in a separate building next door.

The facility added 5,000 square feet in 1990 for an expanded clinic. Child-care returned in 1999 with the addition of an 8,400 square-foot wing.

Both those activities would be beneficiaries of the expansion, the clinic by adding new and modernized examination rooms, child-care by accommodating the addition of youth-development services for younger teenagers.

The clinic, a magnet for immigrants because of its Russian- and Spanish-speaking providers, would also restore discontinued dental services.

Farmer credits much of the center’s economic benefits to child care. The Bemiss and Regal elementary schools are close by, as is Shaw Middle School. Together, schools and center assure neighborhood parents long-term supervision of their kids. They can focus on their jobs, and building careers.

Former board member and radio personality Pete Fretwell, who is helping with the fund-raising campaign, says day-care operations have always had a waiting list of at least 30. There’s no way of gauging how many more parents might enroll their children — and get jobs — if they had that opportunity, he says.

Farmer and Fretwell say they do know that some parents, when informed of an opening, say they had to turn down a position because day care was not available.

“Lots of people use the center to get back on their feet,” Fretwell says.

The center is also a housing resource, even though it hasn’t so much as a single bedroom.

Seniors who live next door in the Winchester Court housing complex come over to play cards — bring your own pennies — or see a doctor.

The nearby Heritage Heights apartments are also where they are because of the center’s presence, Farmer says.

Current board member and Hillyard businessman Paul Hamilton says the center is as much a beacon as a hub for the area’s recovering fortunes.

When a long-time friend and former Hillyard resident was considering a new business in the neighborhood, Hamilton says the center was the one-stop answer to concerns about reconnecting with the area. When the North-South Freeway finally connects with Francis Avenue, he says, growth will take off, and with it more demands on the center.

“We know that we can’t keep up with the needs we have now,” Hamilton says.

The first phase of the expansion, a $363,000 parking lot which required a move of the community garden, is finished. Fretwell says some gardeners were so attached to their plots they took their soil with them.

The ambitious expansion of the building itself awaits a little more cultivation.

The Washington Legislature helped out with $1 million and Congress with $500,000. Neighborhood steering committees have also been active.

Farmer says the key to tapping another key source of funds, charitable foundations, depends on local, private donations. Avista Utilities, Sterling Savings and Holy Family Hospital have kicked in, as have many small contributors from around Hillyard.

Friday’s breakfast is intended to spread the word to smaller businesses that can help out as well.