Catholic Charities, Diocese of Paterson

Our journey began on August 24, 2019 - a day for me that started with excitement as it was my 1st grandsons first trip out of the house. At 10am I got the call – 410 was on fire.  I could see the billowing smoke – millions of thoughts were racing through my mind, mostly just praying everyone was okay.   When I arrived –Paterson Fire Department was battling a 5 alarm fire – Paterson Police had set up a command post trailer right on straight street and these men and woman, who most people never see in action and don’t always get recognized for what they do; – I saw first-hand how efficient they operated. The Red Cross – assisted us setting up 200 cots and disaster care bags were provided to everyone. We then needed to evacuate the building behind us – I cannot tell you what a benefit it is to have the cell phones of your community partners – a Quick call to Saint Joes Health Ken Morris, Ken graciously opened up a whole wing of the hospital that was set for renovation, giving us a whole wing of the hospital for our 30 bed detox unit and when all was said and done around 10:30PM – with the building still smoldering, Msgr Tillyer, Angela, and I took a deep breath, realizing the magnitude of what happened, we appreciated our staff for following procedure and evacuating everyone safely, realizing that NO firefighters or emergency personnel were injured, and everyone was placed safely at least for the evening, we all looked at each other and said – we will rebuild! The building that burned down was the old Carter Wright building that built airplane wings for WW2. Like almost every non – profit, we always fit the service into the building and never have the opportunity to design the building for the service. With recovery, this is ever so important to have a conducive environment.   Planning began, with NK architects to create the best environment for those in treatment.  Paul Natoli helped us estimate the cost of the project and pretty quickly - came the realization that the cost of the building we needed for this pie in the sky dream was around 30 million dollars; and with a significant shortfall, Senator Pou Stepped in; and rallied the legislature to get us the funding we needed and we will be forever indebted to her as she saw this was a worthwhile project for not only our community in Paterson but our State.    We invested in NMTC – A whole new language of financing large projects, especially for a group of social workers. Natoli Construction is ahead of Schedule ….and 15 months from now we wish to have you back here for our grand opening We plan to have a green building – Solar parking lot, State of the art kitchen to serve the over 3000 meals a day provided by SN, hundreds of clients will come in and out of these doors for Inpatient and outpatient counseling and on the second floor our men’s halfway house will have 50 Beds.   I cannot believe this is coming to fruition