Six Points ready to grow after buying old candy store building

Halfway to $1.6 million funding goal

For 16 adults living with developmental disabilities in the Gunnison Valley, Six Points Evaluation and Training is a home that cannot be replaced. But by next spring it might be expanded.

Six Points, a Gunnison non-profit and the valley’s premier thrift store, announced Thursday, November 15, that the organization had recently purchased the Russell Stover Candy building in Montrose, before it was dismantled and brought to the valley on flatbed trucks last week. The building will be refashioned into a 10,000-square-foot facility with an expanded thrift store, office space and training areas to be used by a growing number of people with special needs.
Six Points purchased a commercial lot on the city’s north side, behind the Gunnison Recreation Center, with a plan for expansion in 2009. But the dream of a bigger building didn’t take shape in a couple of years. Twenty years ago, the organization’s board of directors decided to start putting money away for the day when they’d need it.
And they need the money now more than ever. With just 4,800 square feet being donated to house all of their different pieces, Six Points is splitting at the seams of their current location.
“We do a lot of training on the other side of the building and part of that training does require some confidentiality and we don’t have that in our current space,” Six Points executive director Sue Uerling told the crowd gathered to hear the announcement Thursday. “There’s only one totally enclosed office space, which is mine, and I share that with Jennifer [Champ].”
The Thrift Store is also a big part of Six Points business that might not be realizing its full potential in the confined space. Uerling says the store already brings in more than 30 percent of the organization’s revenues, but that it could climb to 50 percent of revenues in a larger, more central location in town.
“The Thrift Store is crucial to our operations in a lot of ways,” Uerling says. “One aspect is providing that vocational training that our clients need so they can hold jobs and be productive members of our community. But it also helps support our revenues.”
Board president Linda Reese said, “In 2009, the board at that time got together and decided we’d saved long enough. It was time to do it, or move on. We decided at that time to go ahead a purchase the property and we were actually able to do that with the cash that we’d saved over the course of time … That started this process.”
Then the opportunity came up to buy the Russell Stover Candy building, which at 10,000 square feet would be a significant expansion of their facility. The building had been donated to Montrose Habitat for Humanity, which didn’t want it, and a line formed of those who did.
Third in that line was Sue Uerling and Six Points. Board member and Western State Colorado University athletic director Greg Wagner said, “There was … a lot of jockeying going on by some others … and [Sue] did an amazing job of navigating through that to find a donor who would step up and make that purchase for a very reasonable price.”
That price has not been disclosed, although it helps put Six Points halfway to a $1.6 million capital campaign to improve their facility.
With the purchase came a contract and a deadline. The organization had just two weeks to dismantle the building and remove it to make way for a new parking lot. And as members of the community saw there was a need, they stepped up to fill the holes with trucks, forklifts and storage. Even the Western State Colorado University football team came to offer their muscle for the move.
“It’s a shell. There’s a lot more that we need to plan and raise funds for to build the internal parts of the building,” Wagner said.
But when the building is up and open, says Nancy Tredway, whose family made a major donation to make the purchase of the building possible, the building will make a statement about how the people of Gunnison care for their own.
“It goes back to the notion of serving … not for an hour or a day … actually look at what they need to empower them and be more self-sufficient not to give them a hand out, but a hand up,” she said. “Here we meet on the side of the road with people who need help and people who are able to give help and make this a great new beginning for Six Points and a new beginning for the community.”