Volunteers and community leaders gathered briefly Thursday morning to celebrate a long-awaited goal: construction of Rotary House, a suite of medical and nonprofit offices as well as transitional housing for homeless families.
Serve Denton, which is overseeing the project, put together a ceremonial “nail driving” to honor the Denton Rotary Club and the Denton Morning Rotary Club, which helped raise $50,000 to fund the renovation of the former Wheeler Printing building on North Elm Street.
Stan Morton, president of Serve Denton’s board of directors, told a small crowd of community leaders at the event that the ceremony was a way to thank everyone for the gifts.
“The project has made a lot of progress in the last few weeks,” Morton said.
The facility is expected to open this fall, according to Joe Ader, executive director of Serve Denton.
Health Services of North Texas will manage a medical clinic with two exam rooms at Rotary House. The building will also be able to accommodate small offices for local nonprofits.
The facility will have four rooms, each of which can sleep up to five, to provide transitional shelter to homeless families. Most commonly, single mothers with one or two children are those who typically need help, Ader said.
The Denton school district has identified at least 780 children in the district who are homeless.
Rotary House still needs help from volunteers and through contributions, including in-kind contributions, Ader said. For more information, visit http://servedenton.org or email info@servedenton.org.
PEGGY HEINKEL-WOLFE can be reached at 940-566-6881 and via Twitter at @phwolfeDRC.
