A blue sea of Salvation Army officials gathered in Salt Lake City Saturday to dedicate the Salt Lake Corps' new Adult Rehabilitation Program Residence and Administrative Offices building.
The dedication, and the move-in that preceded it, ended almost a decade of hopscotching around city locations for the Salt Lake Corps and increases to 100 the number of people who can be admitted into the Army's drug and alcohol rehabilitation program."With this new location we are nomads no longer," said Gerald H. Miller, director of social services for the Salt Lake City Salvation Army Corps.
In the early 1980s, two separate fires destroyed first the warehouse portion of the building the Army was using and then the living areas the men in the adult drug and alcohol rehabilitation program were quartered in.
During the year following the second fire, 48 men were housed in the old Temple Square Hotel and the Army leased warehouse space for its work-therapy programs. By year's end, attrition had dropped the number of men to 12. The following year 27 men were moved into space at 54 W. 700 South, where the group leased two kitchens to prepare food for their meals program.
They found space at 429 W. 300 South and were to move all their warehouse, kitchen, living quarters, work-therapy facilities, dining hall and a thrift store into it when officials had second thoughts. Newly appointed Salt Lake commander Major Russell R. Fritz said to Miller, "This really isn't what you had in the early '80s, is it?"
Privacy would have been limited as would the number of men they could admit into the drug and alcohol program, Miller said. The new facility is licensed by the state to hold as many as 100 men on demand but currently houses 67.
Fritz told Miller to look around a little more. Miller knew that the long-empty Maytime Manor Nursing Home at 252 S. 500 East was available. The building had been in receivership for several years and had become a home for transients. Another group was interested in the property when Salvation Army officials toured the building and offered $580,000 in cash.
"If you believe in miracles, this is it," said Salt Lake County advisory board chairman Jerald D. Holyoak. "In my 19 years on the board I've never seen a deal come together so quickly."
Now the Army has both the warehouse space on the west side that will continue as a thrift store, the dining hall and the work-therapy facility and the east-side location will serve as office space, kitchen and living quarters for the men in the drug and alcohol rehabilitation program.
In attendance for the dedication was Commissioner and Mrs. Paul A. Rader, territorial leaders for the Salvation Army's U.S.A. Western Territory.