Ribbon Cut for New Rainbow Village Campus

Ten homeless families with children from Duluth and Norcross will be moving into Rainbow Village’s new campus soon following a ribbon-cutting ceremony for a Family Service Center and two six-unit apartment buildings Friday (April 20). The new facilities are part of a $6-million project being built in three phases.

Rainbow Village is a transitional housing community. Most of the residents are women fleeing lives of domestic violence and poverty with their children. Besides a place to live, Rainbow Village’s one- to two-year program offers support services that help the families become self-sufficient. Since its founding in 1991, Rainbow Village has assisted 250 homeless families representing 750 individuals.

Phase I of the new Duluth campus will consolidate Rainbow Village families living in two houses in Norcross and two quadraplexes in Duluth, according to Sandra Cathy, chief development officer for Rainbow Village. “The new apartment buildings will allow Rainbow Village to serve two more homeless families for a total of 12 families,” she said. Each apartment contains three bedrooms and two bathrooms.

The quadraplexes will be torn down to make way for a Phase II Community Center offering day care, an after-school program and adult life skills classes for Rainbow Family residents, she said. Rainbow Village will relinquish leases on the two homes in Norcross so that all the families served by Rainbow Village will be housed in the same location.

Ground was turned for Phase I of the new campus last spring. Groundbreaking for the Community Center is scheduled before the end of 2012 with completion by the end of the 2013 school year, Cathy said.

Rainbow Village offices are moving into the Family Service Center at 3427 Duluth Hwy. 120 this week from its location on Main Street in downtown Duluth. The telephone number 770-497-1888 will remain the same.

Phase III will add three apartment buildings that will increase Rainbow Village’s housing capacity to 30 families.

The two initial apartment buildings on the new campus have been named for Lawrenceville philanthropists Clyde and Sandra Strickland, who donated $1 million to the capital campaign to construct the new facility in Duluth. Other significant gifts to the campaign were a $1-million gift from the Scott Hudgens Family Foundation and a $250,000 gift from the Robert W. Woodruff Foundation. 

The ribbon for the new campus was cut by the Rev. Nancy Yancey, CEO of Rainbow Village; Asst. Bishop Keith Whitmore of the Atlanta Episcopal Diocese; his wife Suzie Whitmore, a Rainbow Village advocate; the Rev. Joel P. Hudson, who founded Rainbow Village when he was rector of Christ Episcopal Church in Norcross; Rainbow Village Chief Operations Officer Dr. John Smith; and Cathy.

Festivities included a luncheon for 240 and tours. About 275 visitors toured the new facilities, Cathy reported.

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