A Father’s Place finally moving to larger headquarters

A Father’s Place finally got a new place.

After 15 years at its tiny Conway headquarters, the nonprofit is preparing to move into a larger facility across U.S. 378 on Racepath Avenue.

The City of Conway has agreed to lease a former police substation to the organization for 25 years at the rate of $1 per year, said City Administrator Bill Graham.

City officials ironed out the agreement earlier this month and A Father’s Place staff members plan to begin moving in the coming weeks.

"The building is in pretty good shape," said Wallace Evans Jr., the organization’s executive director. "Clean some cobwebs out here and there, change some filters, but I mean the building is ready to use."

The two-story station is about 4,400 square feet, more than four times larger than the nonprofit’s current location.

A Father’s Place provides job training, adult education and other services. In 2013, the organization served nearly 1,000 people, most of them from the Conway area.

Evans said having the extra space will allow the group to help more people in a more comfortable setting.

"Immediately, that allows us to be able to have that space dedicated to those activities," he said. "They can come in and work and be trained uninterrupted."

Before it was a police station, the building housed a nightclub. It was gutted by the city in the early 2000s and converted into a satellite law enforcement center. The building’s next incarnation will take place in the coming months as interview rooms become offices, detectives stations turn into a computer lab and a supply room changes into a children’s area with toys, games and a television.

Additionally, the building will provide office space for staff members who have typically worked in a nomadic fashion.

"They’ve just kind of been roaming," he said. "Setting up a laptop here and there and utilizing other staff’s computers whenever they could."

Evans’ longterm goal for the former substation is to develop programs that train parents for specific jobs.

The current curriculum includes "soft skills" training, or lessons about dressing for interviews, answering an employer’s questions or explaining a complicated past.

Evans hopes to one day prepare participants for trades. He envisions a school of "hard skills" for barbers and landscapers.

"That will give people in the community some practical, real world skills that are marketable," he said. "They can then go into the workforce."

A Father’s Place isn’t the only Conway nonprofit moving into a former public safety facility. Churches Assisting People (C.A.P.), which provides food to the hungry, is renovating the former fire station near the intersection of Third and Fourth avenues.

The city didn’t need those buildings after constructing a public safety center on Ninth Avenue, and Conway’s contract with C.A.P. paved the way for this month’s agreement with A Father’s Place. Both groups pay the same lease rate.

"It certainly made it easier for them to go ahead and move forward with us," Evans said. "The reality was they were going to end up with two buildings that were going to just sit vacant. It would cost them more money to keep up with two buildings that would not be used. So it’s going to make sense for them to partner with some nonprofits or someone that could utilize those buildings immediately."

This story was originally published May 22, 2015 at 3:10 PM with the headline "A Father’s Place finally moving to larger headquarters."