Renovations on our Phase 2 Building

If you’ve visited our men’s campus over the last few months, you’ve noticed the construction and remodeling project in our Phase 2 building. The renovations are to convert our former administrative offices into new resident bedrooms. The new rooms will increase our capacity in the Phase 2 building and create a safe space for our new residents. The work is being done by Cork Howard Construction and is funded by a Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) through HUD.

Over the last two years, The Extension has had to pivot to make accommodations, new policies, and procedures to meet the challenges of the pandemic and the needs of our residents. The new rooms will provide a safe environment to quarantine incoming residents who test positive for COVID or other contagious illnesses when they’re admitted to the program. Then, once the new residents have a clean bill of health, they will be moved in with the other residents.

According to Executive Director Tyler Driver, “This CDBG funded project gives us a tremendous amount of flexibility to serve the organization for decades to come. Too often, people think of The Extension as a place, and to a degree, it’s that. The Extension is more about what people, those who are helped by the organization and those who do the helping, carry in their heart away from the facilities. Still, all of that good stuff wouldn’t happen without the facilities being there.”

The new rooms feature seamless flooring and washable paints to help with disinfecting.  In addition, since they are being converted from offices to sleep quarters, the existing fixed windows are being retrofitted with operable window inserts to allow for a secondary means of egress if the main hallway is blocked during an emergency. According to Project Manager Mark Harwell, “the biggest challenge has definitely been material delivery.  In particular, the operable window inserts have been delayed a couple of times due to COVID-related supply line issues…”

The renovations will be complete by the end of January and will increase the number of men we can serve in our Phase 2 building to thirty-three plus the ten men in our phase 3 off-campus program. The total number will remain at forty–three through the demolition of our Phase 1 building and the construction of our new 22,000 square foot men’s facilities. We plan to break ground for our new building in April of this year.