ARC Marion group home due for renovations

OCALA — Toward the back of the ARC Marion campus stands a drab, concrete-block facade building.

The 5,000-square-foot-structure’s eight bedrooms and small bathrooms have the look of an aged motel. Built in the early 1980s and not renovated since then, this is a group home for eight developmentally disabled adults who also have behavioral issues.

ARC Marion Executive Director Troy Strawder said the nonprofit agency has long wanted to gut and renovate the interior and give the outside a facelift.

“We want to make it look like a home,” he said.

The problem has been a lack of money, since the state Medicaid waiver money — which primarily funds ARC Marion — may not be used on construction projects.

But come October, that money problem, at least for this project, will be solved thanks to nearly $458,000 in federal Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) money awarded through Marion County government. The County Commission approved the CDBG projects for 2009 during its Sept. 2 meeting.

“We have quite a huge deficit we’re facing this year, so without this funding, this would be impossible,” Strawder said.

Strawder also said that if ARC could not renovate the group home, it would have to find a residence out in the community, where only four to six adults would be allowed to live under current state law.

The plan for this group home, one of two on the ARC Marion property, includes a new roof, new air conditioning units and a total interior renovation, with the exception of the recently revamped kitchen.

ARC Marion, which stands along the 2800 block of Southeast Maricamp Road, has received CDBG aid before. In 2004, a $771,000 grant renovated the adult work training center. In 2005, a $600,000 grant went toward renovation of the early childhood intervention building, where children up to age 3 go for therapy.

Besides ARC Marion, the county will use $387,000 in grant money to develop Sand Hill Park at the Forest Library site along County Road 314A. The county’s park designer, Jim Couillard, said plans call for a playground, a trail, including a boardwalk over a wetlands area, and picnic pavilions.

The county previously has committed $1.57 million in grant money to build a new Forest Library, Community Services director Cheryl Amey said. The old library then will be renovated for a community center, and the trailer that is now the community center will be removed.

“We’re really doing it as a community revitalization project,” Amey said.

The final piece of the county’s CDBG program is $132,000 to the Marion County Homeless Council for a foreclosure assistance program. Amey said the money also will help renters who face a specific problem.

“A lot of people rent houses, and what we’re running into now is you have no way of knowing if the person you’re paying rent to is paying the mortgage until the sheriff nails a note to your door and then you have three days to move out,” Amey said.

A $53,560 request from the Marion County Boys and Girls Club for an educational director was not funded. Amey said the request did not show a source of money to fund the position in future years and some money would have gone to items ineligible for CDBG funding, such as furniture and audit fees.

The county has seen its annual allotment of federal CDBG money gradually drop from more than $2 million in 2002 to about $976,000 this year.

Christopher Curry may be reached at 867-4115 or chris.curry@starbanner.com.