The Gathering Place has only been open a short while, but it’s quickly becoming a place downtown Warsaw for community members to gather.
Friday afternoon, Main Street Warsaw presented a $10,000 facade grant to Eric Lane, executive director and co-founder of Fellowship Missions, for the improvements they’ve made to the building at 123 S. Buffalo St. Fellowship Missions operates The Gathering Place.
Lane said the facade grant went for new exterior entry doors. They had to add a new door for security reasons and the old doors were really bad.
“So we had to do the new secure entry doors on the front. And that one (on Market Street) we had to completely redo because the old one was trashed, and then we had to put a brand new one in on the other side,” he said.
With the old construction, they had to do a lot of tear out and then do new construction and framing for the new doors.
Bringing together individuals, mental health resources and recovery service organizations, The Gathering Place “fosters a sense of unity and support for the community,” according to a previously provided news release. This facility aims to make addiction recovery resources more accessible to the community, providing essential services such as substance use recovery resources, classes, support groups and one-on-one therapy.
Lane said The Gathering Place has been “awesome” in the couple weeks they’ve been open.
“It’s been busy. People just come in and hang out. The community vibe in here has just been great,” he said. “We’re hosting up to six different type of group meetings that are in here. All of them right now are in recovery. We’ve got some mental health meetings that are going on and we have some future ones planned and some future community collaboration-type events that will be planned in here.”
Warsaw-Wayne Fire Territory CARES has two offices upstairs at The Gathering Place, and Fort Wayne Recovery will have one within the next couple weeks, Lane said. Fellowship Missions’ team has four offices. Downstairs in the basement is the Maker Space, so there’s a lot of art things going on.
“We actually have a community art group coming in, so (The Gathering Place) is for anybody. A lot of individuals will be participating in that. We’re working with Nathan Underneath, so it’s been really cool to collaborate there. It’s just been a lot of fun - people coming in and seeing exactly what it is and what it can be used for,” Lane said.
It’s been a lot busier than he thought it would be, he said.
Rob Parker, Main Street Warsaw executive director, said they have allocated all of the facade grant dollars for projects for 2024. The amount from the city of Warsaw increased from $25,000 in 2023 to $50,000 for 2024.
“That equates to over $200,000 in projects completed - because what one of them did was a huge amount of improvements - on $50,000 of investments for facade grants. That’s pretty awesome,” he said.
Facade grants are up to $10,000 this year. The majority of them this year have been for that maximum. “Most of the projects are now over $20,000 in scope for a facade grant, which means $10,000 is reimbursed, and then whatever is above that, the building owner has to pay for. But it’s a great incentive and it really has improved our downtown,” Parker stated.
The facade grant program started over 20 years ago when the Hyett-Palma Study recommended it. When it started out, grants were maximized at $5,000 and a total of $25,000 was awarded.
When Doyle Hyett and Dolores Palma returned in 2023 to do another study, they recommended the city increase the facade grant and the city doubled the amount to a total of $50,000 with grants up to a maximum of $10,000 each.
While the funds come from the city, Main Street Warsaw manages the grant program.
“So as the dollars are made available to us at the beginning of the year, we acquire the applications from the businesses that want to do a facade, and then we evaluate them based on a point system,” Parker said.
If there’s multiple grant applications at the same time, they are ranked to determine the order of the grant awards.
Next year, Parker said, the point system will probably be used a lot more as he’s getting a sense that there will be at least five facade grant requests at the beginning of 2025. If all five of them request the $10,000 maximum, by the end of January all of the grant funds could be allocated.
“The idea is, every year we want to spend the entire facade grant to improve our downtown and to keep it fresh. Things always need to be refreshed, and that’s what the facade grant really encourages people to do: refreshing the look, refreshing the downtown, keeping it a place that is attractive that people want to gather and hang out in,” he said.
For more information about the facade grants and applying, visit the website at https://www.warsawcdc.org/about/grants-loans/facade-grant/.