The Mental Health Association of Frederick County Hopes to move into new facilities next year. CEO Pat Hanberry says the organization will occupy the former El Shaddai Temple at 226 South Jefferson Street in Frederick. She says the reason for the move is the need for additional space. "As we've been growing extremely rapidly, and it finally became very clear that we needed new facilities," Hanberry says.

Hanberry says the Mental Health Association says this new building, which is undergoing renovation, will have room for meetings and training sessions. "Also, we do supervised visitation for families who need to have supervision between a parent and a child. We have to have that in a separate location now, and we want to be able to have that in-house," she says. "We want to be able to offer group therapy in our counseling services program. And we also have a support group for people who have lost loved ones to suicide, and that has had four different homes in as many years."

Besides more space, the two-story building on South Jefferson Street has other advantages over the Mental Health Association's current location on West Patrick Street. "It's easily accessible from {Route} 15. There are several transit lines that go through there. And it has lots of free parking which is something we don't have now in downtown Frederick," Hanberry says.

The renovation is expected to be completed by March, 2012. It will have offices and a community services wing. "What's being renovated right now is the office space, and we're going to moving into that by the end of March. Our fervent hope is once we move into there, we can immediately start renovation on the second portion of the building, which will be our community services wing," says Hanberry.

The cost of this renovation project is $3.4-million, and about 70% of that amount has been raised. But Hanberry says the Association still needs to come up $1-million. "We are currently matching a very, very generous grant from the Ausherman Family Foundation. This is their second $200,000 matching grant to the Mental Health Association to our capital campaign," says Hanberry. "So anything anybody gives now will be matched dollar-for-dollar from the Foundation."

All donations to the capital campaign are tax-deductible, she says.