September 23, 2002

NEW AND EXISTING buildings combine to create a diverse campus at the South Texas Centre, where major construction will begin on three additional buildings late this year.

Non-profits converge in a home of their own
___By Mark Wingfield
___Managing Editor
___SAN ANTONIO--Juanita* came to Baptist Child & Family Services with a bullet lodged in her hip.
___She had carried it for a decade, a painful reminder of the physical abuse she and her 10 children had suffered at the hands of her alcoholic husband. He told people he had been shooting at a trash can that night and the bullet ricocheted to hit his wife and afflict her with a limp.
___Juanita learned about the Baptist General Convention of Texas-affiliated family ministry in San Antonio when one of her sons was ordered by a court to participate in the KAPS program. The son had been detained by police after he sought to protect his mother from abuse by his father.
___KAPS, short for Kids Averted from Placement Services, is an intensive family preservation program for youth offenders who have been given one last chance before incarceration.
___More importantly for Juanita, as it turns out, KAPS is based at the South Texas Centre, an innovative campus of non-profit agencies all focused on child and family services. The center is a project of Baptist Child & Family Services, which owns the 117-acre site where dozens of other non-profit agencies will be relocating.
___Juanita's case illustrates the synergy that will be generated as more clients find one-stop shopping for the range of needs they face, said Cynthia Hamilton, vice president for development and project director for the South Texas Centre.
___As the KAPS caseworker gained Juanita's trust and began to unravel the story of her family's violence, fear and dysfunctional behavior, a clear picture emerged of help needed. But that help would involve more than just what could be offered through Baptist Child & Family Services. Juanita and her family needed a variety of services, all of which were arranged through collaborative work with other participants in the South Texas Centre for non-profits.
___With this help, Juanita was able to keep working at the fast-food restaurant where she had been employed for years while ensuring that she and her children were safe from further harm.
___In many ways, Juanita's family typifies the kind of families served today by Baptist Child & Family Services and many other social-service agencies. Her children are not orphans in need of a permanent home--the model of Baptist child care in previous generations. Instead, some of them needed short-term care, and the entire family needed counseling, encouragement and access to other available resources.
___The trend away from caring for orphan children placed in permanent residence at a traditional children's home lays the foundation for understanding the role of the South Texas Centre for non-profits.
___Baptist Child & Family Services still offers long-term residential care for children in a series of cottages located on the South Texas Centre campus. But administrators of the Baptist agency realized they never would need to expand their residential care program to fill the 117-acre site acquired more than 50 years ago. So they began to ponder what would be an appropriate use of the resources they held.
___The first hint of an answer came a few years ago when the local government wanted to consolidate into one location all its services for child victims of sexual abuse. Baptist Child & Family Services donated eight acres of land for construction of the Alamo Children's Advocacy Center.
___"Then we started thinking, 'What if we did this some more?'" Hamilton explained.
___That led to the idea for the South Texas Centre, which currently is under construction on the south San Antonio site adjacent to Lackland Air Force Base.
___Ten agencies already are working on the campus or will be soon, and construction is set to begin late this year on the first of seven office buildings to house other partners.
___One of those buildings will include 40,000 square feet of space, and each of the other six will offer 10,000 square feet that can be divided into two or three suites as needed. The larger building will provide conference rooms and a variety of office space sizes, including some specifically for small agencies that need shared secretarial support.
___"Meeting and conference space is a big issue for non-profits," Hamilton explained. Most non-profit agencies require meeting space for their boards and advisory groups as well as for training events. But few can afford to rent meeting space at corporate rates.
___In addition to gaining access to meeting space, the agencies that move to the South Texas Centre will save up to 50 percent of their current cost of leasing commercial office space in San Antonio. While commercial space currently leases for $15 to $22 per square foot, space at the South Texas Centre will lease for $9 to $10 per square foot.
___Besides the option of leasing space in one of the South Texas Centre's office buildings, other land parcels of one to six acres have been set aside for agencies to build their own facilities. All the properties will be managed and maintained by a subsidiary of Baptist Child & Family Services.
___The campus will include a health clinic, public school, day-care center for both daily use and drop-in service, ropes course, playgrounds, weekly church services, short-term and long-term residential care, food services, and garden areas for prayer and meditation.
___By bringing a variety of child and family services onto one property, both the agencies and their clients will benefit, Hamilton said. "We discovered all these agencies are serving the same clients; we just didn't know it.
___"The more services we can locate here on the campus, the more likely people are to get all the services they need."
___More than half the $9 million to construct phase one of the project has been donated or pledged, and much of the office space in the first three buildings has been reserved. Baptist Child & Family Services has pledged to build the campus only as money is in hand. With current gifts, construction should begin late this year on the first of the new office buildings and a plaza that will connect the buildings.
___Some tenants in freestanding buildings already have moved onto the campus. Other parcels for building are being negotiated.
___"For some time, our community has needed a project like the South Texas Centre," said former county judge Cyndi Taylor Krier. "The campus will be home to many agencies and organizations which will provide people in our community with services they need to grow, recover, heal and flourish. All those on campus will be able to work together in a high-tech, innovative facility."
___The project also drew praise from Mark Carmona of the Alamo Children's Advocacy Center.
___"The working relationship we have with Baptists right now is great," he said. "They are very willing to work with us."
___Bringing like-minded service agencies together in one location makes "a lot of sense," Carmona said. "More and more none-profits are realizing that tighter and more solid collaborations are going to be needed."

___* *Juanita's name has been changed to protect the identity of her family
___

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