Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

After five years in downtown Wilmore near the railroad tracks, The Family Center is looking for a new home.

The family support center, which offers a resource library, children’s activities and, normally, a meeting place, although it has been mostly closed inside during the coronavirus pandemic, wants its own property, said Tara Hall, the director.

“We’re sitting on a $20,000 nest egg, and what it really came down to for us is, ‘What is the best way to steward those funds for the next six months?'” she said. 

Hall said that for the last six months, the center has had to dip into its savings more and more because of rising costs, the challenges of COVID and increasing rent.

Lack of parking and not having room for growth are other reasons.

“We have two parking spaces that are kind of ours but not really,” she said.

And the center wants to form more partnerships with other groups and offer them room.

“One thing the Family Center has done for a long time is that we’re always bringing in partners for our  workshops, including those on budgeting and family financial planning,” she said. 

By having its own building, the center could rent out space “so it also produces income and allows us to do more things at the Family Center and keep our low costs,” Hall said.

It’s going to take some fundraising to meet the goal, Hall said, but the center raised $10,000 in a golf scramble earlier this year and its annual cyber and silent auction is coming up before Thanksgiving.

Hall said she would like for the center to remain in Wilmore, but it serves people in Jessamine, Mercer and Fayette counties, and she wouldn’t rule out a move to another location if it were the right one for the right price.

“We have put down roots in this community,” said Hall, who is president of the Wilmore Business Association and has formed partnerships with other nonprofits in the community. “This is our home, but another hat I wear is that of a pastor, and sometimes God calls you to other places.”