Westview Centre 4 Women move yields new ways to help
Home previously occupied by Start Me Up Niagara to open by mid-March
Minor construction occupies most of the main floor of the new home for Westview Centre 4 Women, as volunteers hustle to prepare to open for service in the coming weeks.
Jane LaVacca, its executive director, has been working with a skeleton crew at 17 Gale Cres. — the former Start Me Up Niagara building — putting in new floors, patching walls and generally getting ready to open doors to the venue that will offer more assistance to the many low-income women and women experiencing homelessness it serves in St. Catharines’ downtown Queenston Street neighbourhood.
New features in the building will include a kitchen service window to a common area, a pantry and a fresh layer of paint.
The new centre is expected to open by March 19.
“We’re closing at 124 Queenston (the current location) this Thursday coming, then we’ve got March break, which we’re traditionally always closed for, and then we’re reopening over here,” said LaVacca.
“Not everything will be done by then, but at least we will be going.”
The main floor will offer a common space with access to the kitchen, bathrooms and laundry services.
“There’s a lot of things we’ve wanted to do in the past, that we haven’t been able to,” LaVacca said.
One addition she is excited about is lockers, specifically for women staying at shelters who do not wish to lose cherished belongings that might otherwise get stolen.
“If you’re going to go stay in a shelter and you’ve got belongings or things like photographs of children who have been taken away or grown up, or ID, and just don’t want to take it in a shelter, they can bring it here,” she said.
“I’ve got 18 little lockers, and they’ll be downstairs. They can bring it here. They lock it in the locker. They know it’s safe.”
Accessibility was an issue for Start Me Up Niagara, which resulted in the building being sold and it moving to nearby Church Street.
LaVacca said Westview plans to install either an accessibility lift or a ramp but would ultimately be aiming for an elevator in the future.
The new WC4W will be available for everyone, not just women using its services.
“If anybody with any of the ‘anonymous’ groups — AA, CA, NA, any of those anonymous groups — need a location in the evenings … I only have Monday and Thursday nights booked,” she said.
“If they have an anonymous group, and they want to have program here, it’s a win-win for us,” she said.
The biggest benefit, for LaVacca, to come out of the move is the ability to help as many people as possible, who might not have had the help previously.
“When we were at the other location, we’d end up in situations where we have to say, ‘Can you come back in 20 minutes, and we can feed you? Because we’ve run out of space.’”
She said now WC4Whas more room than it knows what to do with.
“That’s huge for us having the space downstairs to have volunteers come in and help more,” she said.
“Currently, we sort clothes in a little tiny corner, so now we’ve got a whole basement.”