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CCA dedicates female residential center
YOUNGSTOWN
The Community Corrections Association celebrated the completion of its 48-bed female residential center Friday in the parish house of the former John Knox Church, 1806 Market St.
Funded by the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction and U.S. Bureau of Prisons, the association provides residential, vocational and substance abuse rehabilitation services to probationers and former prison inmates.
“It’s expanded our female capacity from 26 to 48,” beds, David Stillwagon, the association’s chief executive officer, said of CCA’s acquisition and use of the former parish house.
“This gives us the opportunity to better serve the local courts,” the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction and the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, he said.
“We’re just appreciative to be able to provide the resources to the local community to successfully transition people” into community living, he said.
The acquisition of the John Knox property brings the number of CCA buildings on Market Street to seven.
Forty-seven of the 48 beds for women are now occupied, Stillwagon said.
“The need is present and we’re meeting it,” said Richard Billak, who founded CCA in 1974 and retired as its CEO at the end of 2013.
“We wanted to keep it [the women’s center] on what we call our campus surrounding [CCA’s] six other buildings in the vicinity,” he said of his vision for pursuing acquisition of the church property as a stand-alone female residential facility.
The association wanted to keep its facilities near each other to achieve operating cost efficiency and to maintain “the spirit of CCA as a community agency,” he explained.
CCA bought the 1917-vintage church sanctuary and 1956-vintage parish house for $60,000 after the church, which was a Presbyterian congregation, conducted its last service Nov. 3, 2013.
The association initially intended to use both parts of the former church, but it demolished the sanctuary in 2014 after determining it would be too expensive to bring the sanctuary up to current building and fire codes for the new use.
The John Knox building, which began housing women in July 2014, is CCA’s first building devoted entirely to female residential services.
The three-phase project, costing more than $1 million, which included fully renovating the building and completing its landscaping and parking lot, wasn’t finished until this year.
The building houses women in rooms containing three to six beds each; and it contains offices, classrooms, a cafe, a lounge, a kitchen and a dining hall.
CCA has a total of 217 beds, of which 169 are for men and 48 for women. Occupancy typically ranges between 95 and 100 percent of association beds, Stillwagon said.
With an annual operating budget of just over $7 million, the association has 111 full-timers and 10 to 15 part-timers on its staff.