VTC Enterprises—a Santa Maria-based nonprofit offering programs and services to people living with disabilities—broke ground on a new life services facility May 14, despite strong, Santa Maria-style gusts of wind.
A group of local officials, VTC employees and clients, and other community members met at the future site—a vacant parking lot on the nonprofit’s A Street property—to catch a glimpse of what the new 18,260 square-foot building will look like.
Before the unveiling of the design, ceremony attendees were welcomed by a slew of speakers, including Santa Maria Mayor Larry Lavagnino. In his speech, Lavagnino expressed his gratitude to VTC for improving the lives of hundreds of local Santa Marians and their families.
“These people want to work, they want to be productive members of society,” Lavagnino said. “And, as a city, we want to welcome and support them.”
In the last two years, the city of Santa Maria has disbursed $400,000 in funding to VTC. The City Council was expected to vote on whether or not to approve a final installment of $120,000 during its May 19 meeting.
Also during the ceremony, VTC CEO Kirk Spry said the building had an expected cost of $3.9 million. Changes in construction prices, however, have lowered that price tag to less than $3 million.
To date, the organization has raised approximately $2.2 million to pay for the project.
“We’re more than two-thirds of the way there,” Spry said, thanking the city of Santa Maria and a handful of other nonprofits and individuals for their donations.
After the ceremony, Kathy Cook, VTC’s director of rehabilitation, told the Sun the new Life Quality Services building has been in the works for the last five years.
“It’s been a dream for a lot longer,” said Cook, who ran the Life Quality Services program for 10 years before becoming director of rehabilitation.
The Life Quality Services program, she said, provides VTC’s clients with independent living skills, socialization skills, and prevocational training.
“Basically all the things you and I take for granted every day,” Cook said.
Without this new facility, she added, most of these clients would have to be institutionalized in state development centers.
Currently, the Life Quality Services program operates out of a collection of offices that are falling into disrepair. The offices, Cook said, used to be barracks for migrant farm workers and are at least “80 to 100 years old.”
The new building, she said, will have dozens of features designed specifically to benefit the lives of people with disabilities, such as a courtyard, walking corridors, and fountains.
“It’ll have a park-like feeling,” she said, adding the building will also have a wheelchair accessible kitchen and tracking in the ceiling to help program staff move non-ambulatory individuals.
For more information on VTC services or to make a donation toward the Life Quality Services Building, call 928-5000.
This article appears in May 21-28, 2009.
