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Open house celebrates renovation of Burdman facility
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The Doris Burdman Home celebrated its rededication and completion of a $254,000 renovation. The renovation includes a handicap-access entrance ramp, a handicap-access restroom, an elevator lift and expansion of the facility that houses adult mentally ill clients from 12 to 21 beds.
By WILLIAM K. ALCORN
YOUNGSTOWN
Sally Tod Dutton said she is glad to see the home in which her mother, Marguerite Tod Owsley, grew up being used for a good purpose by the Burdman Group.
An open house Wednesday at the former Tod home, now known as the Doris Burdman Home, celebrated the rededication of the home and completion of a $254,000 renovation.
The renovation includes a handicap-access entrance ramp, a handicap-access restroom, an elevator lift, and expansion of the facility that houses adult mentally ill clients from 12 to 21 beds, said Joseph Caruso, Burdman Group executive director.
Along with other invited guests, Dutton toured the home in which she played as a child and which brought back memories of Tod family holiday events.
“I’m also pleased that they have kept as much of the original architecture as they have,” she said of the home on Broadway Avenue built in 1915 by Fred Tod, grandson of Ohio Gov. David Tod.
The former Tod residence was purchased and renovated in the fall of 1974 with $247,000, about half of which was secured by former state Sen. Harry Meshel from the Ohio Department of Mental Health, and the other half supplied by the Mahoning County Mental Health Board. The new facility was dedicated June 15, 1975.
Doris Burdman started this organization and the open house celebrates 40 years of committed quality service to the Mahoning Valley by the agency’s 200 full- and part-time employees, Caruso said.
He said the Burdman Group provides services to about 2,500 individuals each year with an annual budget of about $7 million. When Burdman started the program, it had a budget of $36,000 and two employees, Caruso said.
The Burdman Group has 33 funding sources, of which the Mahoning County Mental Health Board and Trumbull County Mental Health and Recovery Board are major contributors to the behavioral program.
The Burdman Group does great work in transitional and individual living skills for clients in helping them move into the community or back with their loved ones, said Ronald Marian, executive director of the Mahoning County Mental Health Board.
The Burdman Group’s core areas of service are behavioral health services, including case management and counseling and independent housing units for mentally disabled; employment and job retention, and the Sojourner House domestic violence shelter for women and children.
Renovation funding was provided by Mahoning County Mental Health Board, $125,000; The Doris Burdman Fund for Mental Health, a fund of the Community Foundation, $56,000; the Community Foundation of the Mahoning Valley, $25,000; The Youngstown Foundation, $25,000, and the J. Ford Crandall Foundation, $23,000.