Scott Burlingame, Executive Director
We have some breaking news to report today at Independence,
Inc. After over a decade in our current location, Independence, Inc. will soon
be moving its Minot office.
Earlier today, our board chair Susan Ogurek and myself
signed a five year lease to move into the office located at 2000 East Burdick Expressway
in Minot. We will be leasing the north side of this building, and share the
building with Herslip Construction. This building is right across from the
fairgrounds, and is the former home of PATH Inc.
This is not a decision we came by easy. We like our current
location because it is centrally located in Minot, we each have our own office,
and we have two nice meeting rooms to use. However, since we first moved into this
building a little over a decade ago, the cost of commercial property has
increased significantly. This is a hard pill to swallow for many of us, but we can
no longer afford our current office.
Nevertheless, we are looking forward to our new office.
Moving into a smaller area will ensure that we are able to maintain our current
staffing level. That means we can
continue to serve people with disabilities and our communities as we have in
the past. We are also looking forward to having less of a maze in our office.
There are some things that are going to change as a result
of the move. To start with, we are no
longer going to have a kitchen in which to provide cooking clubs. However, we
are working hard to find an alternative location to use. We will have very limited
meeting space, so we may be using other meeting rooms around town for other Independent
Living Skills classes and community meetings.
We need to be out of our current location by the end of
April, so my guess is we will make our move in the middle of the month.
On behalf of our staff and our Board of Directors, we would
like to thank everybody in advance for their patience in this process. Please check back here for more details on any
changes in office schedule during the move.
If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to give me
a call at 701-839-4724 or email me at scottb@independencecil.org.