WOW! We can't believe it's been a year now since we held our Grand Opening for our Forever Home in downtown Cleveland.  As many know, it had been a 1 year and 3 month process of cleaning out + major construction for this building that had been devoid of life for many years. 

Purchasing this building was a major step of faith for our organization, but we knew this was an opportunity only God could have orchestrated.  In spite of the main level of the building being completely full of anything and everything you could think of (see pics below), there were rental apartments on the top floor that were occupied.  Because of this fact, we realized that that would allow our organization to be able to purchase the building.  With that plan in place, we knew we would next need to raise the construction expenses to be able to restore this space.

At the beginning of 2019, we launched our Capital Campaign with a goal to raise $150,000.  Funds we needed to clean out, restore and build out the space to fit our needs.  Our organization had been operating for 2 years in separate side by side spaces and had outgrown both spaces a couple times over.  We were more than ready to get this fundraising initiative launched and construction started!

As this space had been used by the previous owners as a storage space (and all those items came with the building), we spent the first of 2019 just cleaning it out. We had many volunteers spend weekend after weekend with us throwing things away & organizing all that we would sell in an estate sale.  We went through a total of 7(!) 20yd dumpsters for stuff that just needed to be thrown away.  When we had sorted and unpacked all the items in the building, we were a little overwhelmed and realized it was too much of a task for us to host the sale.  We found a wonderful company to handle the sale for us and we couldn't have asked for better partners in Blair's Estate Sale.  After a 2 day weekend Estate Sale in our building, construction was ready to begin. We had raised enough money to begin the restoration process. 

Construction began. We started with the outside of the building and worked our way in. We loved the idea of cleaning and painting the outside of the building first so it would help bring continued awareness to the community about our organization. We knew the community would see the transformation and get excited about what we had in store for this building that had been just sitting unused for so long. 

We knew our Capital Campaign would be a fundraising initiative that would last throughout the year in able to meet our goal, but the kickoff to the Building Campaign was a great and successful start.  We celebrated our 5 year anniversary  that night and all God had done and was going to do through this new building.