A Pekin nonprofit organization that assists unhoused individuals is preparing to move its downtown day shelter into a new location.
Darla Koonce of the Pekin Outreach Initiative says they are in the process of remodeling space at the Salvation Army facility on Derby Street to fit their needs as an outreach center.
“The opportunity presented itself to work with the Salvation Army; they had an open space where their childcare used to be in a basement-like area,” Koonce said. “We felt like we were outgrowing where we were, and it would be a good fit because we can use their resources to help some of the guests that we serve transition into permanent-type housing, eventually going through their transitional program.”
Koonce said the new outreach center will have its own dedicated entrance apart from the Salvation Army side of the facility.
“It is in a part of their building, but our guests will not have access to their section of the building, nor will theirs have access to ours,” she said.
Koonce said the current Outreach Center on Elizabeth Street serves between 45-60 people each day, but it can only handle about 25 people at one time. That spurred the interest in finding a bigger space.
“We started looking for other locations to see if we could find something that would work for us, and we looked at a couple that didn't really pan out,” Koonce said. “We then kind of had the opportunity with working with the Salvation Army to say, ‘hey, we have this space. Would you guys be interested in going in there, and moving from the downtown Pekin area into the Salvation Army area?’ A lot of our guests stay there at night in their emergency shelter, so it kind of just seemed like a good fit.”
The outreach center offers showers, meals and laundry facilities on a daily basis. They also provide connections to organizations like Goodwill, Heartland Health Services and Trillium Place for services such as medical and dental treatment, addiction and mental health counseling, and job placement.
Koonce said their new location will have more useable space for their guests.
“We’re in the middle of like remodeling; we have to make it handicap accessible and redo the bathrooms and things like that,” she said. “But it definitely has a nicer-sized kitchen and a big open area. There's not so many little-sectioned rooms, so it's going to help us actually be able to monitor the guests better.”
Koonce said they’re targeting mid-to-late June for a transition into the new location, depending on how long the remodeling and cleanup takes. She said Pekin Outreach Initiative won’t be vacating the current facility on Elizabeth Street entirely.
“We're going to keep it for a couple years anyway, mainly to store things. We may use it to have our monthly POI meetings as well; currently, we do those at Grace United Methodist, but we'll probably move it over there,” Koonce said. “We have a three-year agreement with the Salvation Army, so we want to kind of see how this is all going to work out and stuff before we get rid of our current place.”
