June 20, 2014 at 5:05 p.m.
Bethesda looking to consolidate offices with South Park purchase
Bethesda looking to consolidate offices with South Park purchase
Bethesda currently has two offices in the Rhinelander area - one out on Oneida Lane near Nicolet Area Technical College and one on Kemp Street across from Culver's. Both of the offices are leased, however, so the plan now is to consolidate them into the South Park building, Area Director Kathy Todd said.
"Our main service office and our other service office, we lease both, and we're going to consolidate them at the school," she said.
Bethesda is taking the consolidation route for two reasons, Todd said. For one, the new location is more visible to the public. The other reason is having the offices in a building owned by Bethesda will help save money.
"We did it for two reasons. One, the space is a visible community space compared to having our employment community life services office way out in the woods," she said. "But the biggest thing is we are a non-profit agency and this move will save us money."
The purchase of the building was made possible by a donation from an unidentified donor.
"We had a donor that donated money that she earmarked for the Rhinelander area because she had been a person that vacationed in this area for many years of her life," Todd said. "She wanted to donate a significant amount of money which is being used to purchase the building. What that does is save our Rhinelander offices money because we won't have to lease two buildings."
The name of the donor is not being released at this time, though Todd said once Bethesda decides how to properly honor the woman her name will be released.
"We're trying to figure out how to honor her, how to properly thank her for her generous donation," she said.
While consolidation is the main purpose of the purchase, Todd said there are other things Bethesda is looking into, including setting up a thrift shop in the South Park building, though the additional plans are all dependent on available space and money.
"We've been approached by three community agencies that would like to be partners with us and use some of our space," she said.
"We don't know if we can accommodate all of them because we're also investigating a possible thrift store or thrift boutique, possibly, in the building."
For those that know Bethesda, the news that a thrift store is possibly coming to the building isn't a surprise.
"Typically, Bethesda has thrift stores, but they actually go and either erect buildings or they use an existing building and then they hire employees to do their thrift store stuff. We want to try something different," Todd said. "We would like (the store) under our roof and we'd like to use several of the people we support in our work services to be some of those employees. It would be like an on-the-job training site that would still be open to the public to come and purchase things."
As for the timeline for all of this to be completed, Todd said that is still up in the air.
"We'll be doing it in phases," Todd said. "It all depends on the construction part of it, but the moves will take place in phases. We're still talking about how we envision the space being used, ... but for sure the two locations will be (at South Park). The other stuff would be great."
Marcus Nesemann may be reached at [email protected].
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