HEALING PLACE TAKING SHAPE
Work progresses, fundraising continues on Interfaith Community Service’s on recuperative care center
The transformation of an aging motel into a new recuperative care center with temporary housing for homeless people has passed some major milestones, and supporters of Interfaith Community Services will get to see the project’s progress and hear about an ongoing fundraiser on March 25.
“This is an example of our construction in process,” Interfaith Executive Director Greg Anglea said Friday as he stood in a room with exposed walls and yet-to-be installed shower.
The room will be one of six new rooms compliant with the American Disability Act at the former America’s Best Value Inn & Suites, which previously had only two ADA rooms and still doesn’t have an elevator.
Anglea said there still is much work to do on the $11 million project, which he estimates will need another $3 million to complete. But as the public will see at an upcoming virtual tour of the Abraham and Lillian Turk Recuperative Care Center, the facility is taking shape and as of Friday had 23 formerly homeless clients on site.
To learn more about the center and to register for the tour, visit Interfaithservices.org/turkcenter/.
The county Board of Supervisors approved a $6 million grant for Interfaith to re-create more recuperative care beds in 2019, and another $1 million came from La Jolla resident Jerry Turk, who developed Pala Casino Spa and Resort and asked the center to be named after his parents.
“Knowing how my parents thought, knowing what was important to them, I can’t think of anything I’d rather do than honor them in this manner,” Turk said, adding that he also believes the country should be working to solve homelessness.
The center will provide 33 graduate lodging rooms for people who have been through a program and need a place to stay for up to 30 days while Interfaith helps connect them to housing opportunities and services. Two other rooms will be used to isolate people for one week before they are allowed into Interfaith’s Haven House shelter as a way of preventing the spread of the coronavirus.