The newly constructed Saint Lawrence Centre. Photo Credit: Saint Lawrence Centre Facebook page

By Shane Clausing

Saint Lawrence Centre

Saint Lawrence Centre opens new permanent home

Oct 7, 2020 | 1:28 PM

The St. Lawrence Centre finally has a permanent home.

On October 7 the Saint Lawrence Centre opened the doors to their new permanent Daytime Programming space. The space is located on the main floor of the Street Outreach Centre at 10012 97 A Street across from Rotary House.

“It’ll be our permanent home for the next couple of years,” said Jared Gossen, Project Lead with the Saint Lawrence Centre. “The main exciting thing for us is that we found a permanent home for these types of services moving forward and that had always been the struggle.”

“I don’t think we would’ve been able to move forward without the support of the City of Grande Prairie. It’s great to see their continued commitment and to making sure vulnerable people are taken care of.”

Photo Credit: Saint Lawrence Centre Facebook

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The space was purchased with help from the Rotary Club of Grande Prairie. Last year the organization donated $1,000,000 to help build the Daytime Homeless Shelter. The City of Grande Prairie also helped in locating a permanent space for the shelter.

Previously the daytime shelter was located within the Rotary House. However, because of capacity limitations and fire code rules, the Saint Lawrence Centre was forced to temporarily close in March of 2019, but was able to begin operating out of that space again later that year.

“Virtually the idea of the Saint Lawrence Centre has always been to provide a living room type space, to people who don’t have a living room,” explained Gossen. “It is a harm reduction and behavior-based environment.”

“We accept people where they are at and understand that even when people are struggling with chaotic and erratic behaviors, they are still a vital part of our community and need a safe place to be to. It’s exciting to welcome people into this specifically designed space.”

Those who visit the building can have a shower, do laundry, or grab some food or coffee. It is open from 8:00 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. daily.

Photo Credit: Saint Lawrence Centre Facebook

Photo Credit: Saint Lawrence Centre Facebook

The building will also have COVID-19 restrictions in place.

According to Gossen, the restrictions are similar to other homeless facilities within Grande Prairie, to ensure that facilities within the city aren’t overrun, and to also make sure they are safe for everyone who may enter.

Gossen says sanitizing and masking will be mandatory once inside the facility.

The facility expects to serve between 90-110 people per day, and Gossen tells EverythingGP that its pretty cool to see Grande Prairie get a facility like this.

“Just having people use the new facility and new bathrooms, its almost an emotional experience. We’ve got some people who are really used to being thought of as last. Its really cool to see peoples emotional response to being in a space that is for them. Its really heart warming.”