Hope the Mission opened their new community center and preschool to serve the families of their Woodlands shelter on Ventura Blvd.
The new center is in the old Denny’s building just west of Winnetka Avenue.
Hope the Mission’s President Rowan Van Sleve called this founder Ken Craft’s “passion project” and thanked State Senator Henry Stern. “Without state money this wouldn’t have happened,” said Van Sleve.
Stern said to love your neighbor as yourself is good, but to love a stranger as yourself is what they are doing. “Woodland Hills is making a stranger a neighbor,” he said.
The major donor for the project was the Betty Bazar Foundation, represented Thursday by her daughter Paula Bazar Sandling. Woodland Hills residents Bazar and her husband Harvey founded Sensor Systems, Inc., an aviation antenna company that would evolve into a major supplier for commercial and corporate aircraft.
The new facility features a large community room and two school rooms, one for nursery and one for a preschool, which was funded by Child Care Resource Center and will be administered by Head Start. Craft said that there is no other shelter in California that has a preschool and community center.
The building was designed by Nerin Kadribegovic of Kadre Architects to be a “place of hope” and built by Shea. An inside mural was painted by award-winning artist and muralist Niki Srinivasa.
