From left – Lori Parmenter – Administrative Coordinator, Brian Cousins – Genesee County Chamber of Commerce, Gina Lathan – Hope Center Director, Pat Bedford – Made to Bloom program facilitator, Tammy Genagon – Senior Moments Alzheimer’s respite facilitator, Amy Thompson – Fresh Start tutoring facilitator. (Provided photo)
Hope Center of Le Roy needed more space. Their programs are growing and it has become hard to accommodate all of them under one roof. Lots of times there is a juggling of schedules to fit everyone in at their current location at 42 Main Street in Le Roy, where they are currently renting the storefront space.
“Since we started in 2017, and for about a year, our board had the idea of what if we could buy this building (#42 Main) so we could have our own space, have our own building,” says Gina Lathan, Hope Center Director.
“There’s apartments, there’s three storefronts, but financially, they crunched numbers for months and couldn’t make it work because of what a building of that scope costs.”
After wrapping up their November board meeting, someone mentioned the Hobby Horse building at 56 Main Street, which has been empty since the summer of 2022. The owner of the antique business retired, and no one has occupied the building since.
After speaking with a real estate friend, Lathan found out that the Hobby Horse building was for sale.
“He said that the building went on the market today, no sign in the window or anything. So, we got in the next day to see it, and every board member, every staff that came in, we could all see it. We could just see and it was affordable, much more in our price range, and manageable.”
Hope Center closed on the property at 54 Main Street last Friday and are currently running a Building Campaign to raise funds to pay for improvements and to pay back the investor. Link to the website: Hope Center
Hope Center operates 90% on donations and grants.
The nonprofit group serves and supports all of Genesee County with programs like Fresh Start Tutoring for children and adult learners, Senior Moments Respite, which provides meaningful, enriching experiences for individuals living with Alzheimer’s disease or other forms of memory impairment, Made to Bloom, a mix of workshops, classes, speakers and off-site outings for women, and Men of Hope, a dedicated group of men who offer their time and talents through mentoring, handyman services, heavy lifting, and various acts of service.
“We try to make all of our programming free or affordable, so we don’t have a whole lot of working capital, we couldn’t go get a mortgage. We didn’t have $200,000 so we kind of had to say this would have been a great but, you know, who knows.”
Lathan says she went home that night, like many people do, and scrolled through Facebook. There she reached out to a local investor/real estate friend, who gave Lathan the names of three possible investors who might be interested. After messaging with the first person over Thanksgiving weekend, her name was passed on to a friend, who was a retired Rochester City police officer, Patrick Gallagher, who runs an investment business.
“He called me the next day, and I told him what we do, what our dreams are, what our mission is. We want to help people. And at the end of an hour conversation, he said, I am going to fund this whole thing for you, private funded. I’ll give you a year to pay it back. So, we have a huge, huge job ahead of us, like we have to raise the money so we can pay him back.”
Lathan says the main thing is Gallagher, as a police officer for all those years, he sensed that people that were the most troubled were the people who just had no hope, and they became the most troubled people.
“So, he said, what you’re doing is helping to, you know, alleviate that and give people what they really need.”
Hope Center has five staff and a lot of volunteers to cover their programs. They are looking forward to having more space for tutoring where they can now service seven students at one time, as opposed to just three.
“We knew we needed more space for our Senior Moments Respite Program that’s for Alzheimer’s and dementia families that live with that and we needed more space, because right now, we hold that program at the Moose, and we have about 12 guests that we service, and you can’t really serve anymore. So having that space, we can have it four times a month, therefore we can have more people.”
They will also have a full kitchen along with office space. The area near the full kitchen is called the Gathering Place and will be a community space for parties and celebrations.
“We’re thinking of the decor and making it like in honor of the history of all the things that happened in this space. So downstairs, in the basement and upstairs, we found some cool old signs. There’s a ton of bags from The Economy Department store.”
Hope Center is hoping to cut the ribbon on the new center at 54 Main Street during Oatka Fest weekend this summer. On Friday, they launched a Building Campaign to raise $400,000
For more information. Link to the website: Hope Center
“We have some wonderful ideas that the space is going to allow us to do. One that we know we’re going to launch in the fall, is a mentorship program for young girls, middle school to high school. So, we’re partnering with them, and with professional women in the community, and meeting two, three times a month, just kind of growing that mentorship for young ladies.”
Amy Thompson – Fresh Start tutoring facilitator(left) and Gina Lathan – Hope Center Director