Goodwill Easterseals bringing services to new Trotwood facility
Oct. 28—TROTWOOD — Goodwill Easterseals and city of Trotwood officials on Thursday celebrated the groundbreaking for a new community center that will offer services for seniors, low-income residents and others.
"We have our Main Street campus downtown, which serves a lot of people, but we thought we needed to expand out into the Trotwood area to be more accessible to people from West Dayton and Trotwood, so they can more easily access our services," said Goodwill Easterseals Miami Valley CEO Lance Detrick. "We're bringing a lot of what we do here; it will really be quite a comprehensive campus."
Goodwill Easterseals services provided at the new facility will include employment programs, community outreach programs, programs for individuals living in poverty, skills training/certification programs, senior adult services, behavioral health services, developmental disability services, an adult day support program, and a free car seat program.
The new West Campus Community Services Center will be located in the 800 block of East Main Street in Trotwood, next to the new Dayton Metro Library branch. The total cost for the 20,000-square-foot facility is $6.8 million.
According to Detrick, construction will begin in the next month, under Ferguson Construction Co., and a target completion date is October 2022.
Trotwood Mayor Mary McDonald said the project was initially set to begin in 2020, but was delayed as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, McDonald said this delay allowed for the project to grow through additional funding sources, including the donation of $10 million to GESMV from philanthropist and Amazon stockholder MacKenzie Scott in December of 2020.
"I was kind of disappointed that we weren't able to have this happen in 2020, but out of that, the center is going to be even larger as a result of the MacKenzie Scott donation," she said. "Having to wait turned out to be a blessing to us."
McDonald said $3.5 million of the project cost came from the Scott donation. Detrick said an additional $1 million came from private donations, with the rest of the funding coming from internal GESMV funds and a loan to cover the difference.
It was also announced Thursday that Goodwill Easterseals Miami Valley is partnering with the Miami Valley Child Development Center on this project to provide early childhood education options at the West Campus Community Services Center.
Berta Velilla, CEO of MVCDC said her agency aims to help families achieve their hopes and dreams.
"We will be able to do that better with the co-location of four classrooms in this facility in a space where families can come and know that their children will be receiving exceptional early childhood education while also having the opportunity to access the myriad of services that Goodwill will offer in this facility," she said.
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Aimee Hancock
