Friendship House renovation approval delayed

PEORIA, Ill. (WMBD) — The kitchen has been gutted and primed for design, but final approval for a North Valley nonprofit’s renovation plans has been delayed for two weeks.

Friendship Home, a nonprofit that helps small-revenue families with wraparound companies and programs, is seeking to renovate the kitchen and pave the parking great deal with $130,000 of their very own money.

“The kids are heading to be cooking in there, be in a position to provide scorching foods out of there, so it’s a huge offer in phrases of the amount of money of households its heading to help,” explained Marcellus Sommerville, CEO of Friendship Home.

There are also strategies to incorporate a travel-via window for easier meal pickup during the wintertime.

“If persons can stay in their motor vehicle and be an arm carry absent to receive providers in its place of going for walks in the freezing cold… The imagined is to meet people exactly where they are,” said Sommerville.

The variations, which won preliminary acceptance from the city’s Zoning and Organizing Commission on July 7, now require the stamp of approval from Peoria Metropolis Council to get going.

“We are really fired up about the chance to renovate this place and be in a position to support much more families,” explained Sommerville.

But that final decision will be deferred for two weeks at Tuesday’s metropolis council assembly, in accordance to Third District Councilman Tim Riggenbach.

“We don’t hurry anything and ask a bunch of questions on the floor that we know we can not get answers to,” he reported.

Riggenbach said he is conference with Sommerville on Friday to discuss the renovations.

“The value that Friendship Home provides for that neighborhood, for the city at substantial, is some thing that we never want to undervalue,” he claimed.

Sommerville stated the kitchen will be named following Quinton Scott, 19, who died by gun violence on July 4. He said Scott liked to cook dinner and was turning his life all around at Friendship Dwelling.

“We just want to see it entire and to have that legacy of who he was and who he was hoping to develop into, be aspect of the Friendship Home,” he stated.