Women's center ready to build new facility

Coddington Place, an apartment-style housing project for victims of domestic violence or sexual assaults, is on the way to being constructed. After three years of work, the money needed for the Women's Safety & Resource Center is in place and grounbreaking will be on Aug. 11 at the site pictured here on Newmark Avenue in Coos Bay. World Photo by Lou Sennick

By Elise Hamner, City Editor

It started with some golf, a lasagna dinner fund-raiser and an idea for helping abused women.

Three years later, the Women's Safety & Resource Center has its money to build Coddington Place, an apartment-style housing project for victims of domestic violence or sexual assaults.

The Oregon Community Foundation announced a $75,000 grant award to the project Tuesday in a press release. The chunk of money will help fill the last of the funding gap in the almost $1.7 million venture to be constructed on slightly less than an acre of land along Newmark Avenue in Coos Bay, near Southwestern Oregon Community College.

The award represents a $20,000 boost over what grant writers originally sought, according to the center's Executive Director Judy Moody.

"That was just a very sweet deal," she said last week.

The city of Coos Bay approved the project in late 2003. The two-story building will hold 10 apartments, which will include one- and two-bedroom units, for women and children. Also, there will be a common area for families, individual garden plots, a 1,200-square-foot office for the Resource Center's staff, and even a dog kennel.

A lot of women won't leave an abusive relationship without their pets, she said.

While grants, written with the help of the Umpqua Community Development Corporation, are funding more than 90 percent of the project, Moody credited North Bend resident David Crumley as one of the biggest heroes involved.

"He knew we needed more room and he kept saying, 'I'm going to get you the money to buy you the property,'" Moody said.

He and volunteers went to work. Three years later the money still is coming in.

Talk to Crumley and he'll credit his wife, Marian, a retired nurse. She was the one who first began volunteering at the women's shelter. It wasn't long before she came home telling him about things that needed to be done, but there wasn't any money. Soon, Crumley said, he found himself involved. Together, he and Marian raised almost $70,000 of the $135,000 in donations.

They weren't the only ones. The Coquille Valley Elks held a golf tournament and gave money. Area resident Nick Furman pedaled on bike 4,300 miles across the country to raise donations. His wife, Kathy Low, helped in the trek.

Then the grant agencies took notice.

"Once it was apparent the community supported it, the grants came in. That's pretty much the story," Crumley said.

Almost.

The next chapter is set to begin Aug. 11 when organizers and volunteers gather to dig and break ground at the site.