FORT SMITH -- A homeless advocacy group announced Friday the purchase of a vacant factory building south of downtown Fort Smith that it plans to renovate into a service campus and shelter for the homeless.
After more than three years of effort, the Old Fort Homeless Coalition has raised the $1.9 million to purchase and renovate the 127,000-square-foot Riverside Furniture building at 301 S. E St.
Members of the coalition gathered at the building Friday afternoon to release 75 lavender balloons representing the 75 beds the Riverview Hope Campus will offer to homeless people. Lavender is the color for homeless awareness, coalition spokesman Violet Adams said.
"We are finalizing one of the most important tasks to date in opening the new Riverview Hope Campus," coalition President Karen Phillips said in a news release. "We are overjoyed with the possibilities that the campus will bring to the city of Fort Smith and surrounding areas."
The group has been trying since 2012 to raise the $603,000 to buy the building and the estimated $1.3 million it will cost to renovate 30,000 square feet of the factory space for the first phase of the campus.
Money for the project has been raised through federal grants and private donations, including $100,000 each from the Richard Griffin and Robbie Westphal families of Fort Smith.
Mercy Hospital also has committed $350,000 toward establishment of a medical clinic at the campus.
Other organizations that have signed memoranda of understanding to provide services at the Riverview Hope Campus are Fort Smith Adult Education, Western Arkansas Counseling and Guidance Center, Crawford-Sebastian Community Development Council, Fort Smith Housing Authority, Good Samaritan Clinic, and the Crisis Intervention Center.
Those organizations will offer the homeless educational opportunities, counseling, medical and dental care, job training and help finding housing.
Coalition member Ken Pyle said he expected construction to begin around the end of September.
The last count of the homeless in Fort Smith, in January, showed 179 people were classified as homeless. Of those, 92 were unsheltered.
A survey at that time showed 42 people were severely mentally ill, 42 people suffered from chronic substance abuse, 43 people were victims of domestic violence, 33 people were military veterans, and 91 people were either continuously homeless for a year or more or had at least four episodes of homelessness in the last three years.
NW News on 07/18/2015