As growing pains necessitated a move, the Shuswap Association for Community Living (SACL) is now comfortably housed in two new locations.
After 16 years at its Hudson Avenue location, the SACL Community Inclusion program moved to 825 Lakeshore Drive SW in mid-June, while the administration and Community Employment Services relocated to 171 Shuswap Street NW on July 10.
"We are so excited. We've been in this building downtown for 16 years and we've outgrown it, it doesn't meet our needs anymore," executive director Karen Hansen explained of the move.
It took over a year, she said, of working with Remax realtor Garret Pristie, who offered his services free of charge, to find commercial space that eventually resulted in the split locations.
"Unfortunately, it was just lack of being able to find a space that was big enough to fit all of us," Hansen said. "But we are just down the road from one another, and each space fully meets the needs for what each program requires."
After getting settled in, the SACL will be hosting open houses at both locations on Tuesday, Aug. 6, from 1 to 5 p.m. to debut the new spaces and show appreciation to the community.
"We've just had so much support from local businesses and the community with grants and fundraising and whatnot over the last couple of years, that we just really want to send a huge thank you to our community for supporting us and helping make this a little bit easier," Hansen said, adding that in doing a commercial analysis, Pristie had also been instrumental in helping the SACL advocate to get increased funding for their lease amount to enable the move.
"We couldn't have done this without him."
