Judson Center moving HQ from Royal Oak to Farmington Hills - Judson Center

Judson Center moving HQ from Royal Oak to Farmington Hills

For entire feature from Crain’s Detroit Business, visit: https://bit.ly/2G85jJH

The Judson Center is moving its headquarters from the Royal Oak site it’s called home for the past 95 years to a larger, more visible location in Farmington Hills purchased from fellow nonprofit JARC.

Judson purchased the lower two floors in the building at 30301 Northwestern Highway, west of Inkster from Bloomfield Hills-based JARC, for $1.45 million. The deal closed May 28.

Pappas Financial continues to own the top floor in the building.

Judson, a provider of autism and foster care and other services, will move about 70 administrative support employees to the new space in August, President and CEO Lenora Hardy-Foster said.

The dea was funded from more than $10 million in reserves held by Judson’s wholly owned subsidiary, the Judson Foundation.

Judson plans to launch Applied Behavior Analysis therapy, social skills groups for those with autism and family supporter services for people at the new location, to help fill unmet demand in Bloomfield, Novi, Farmington and Southfield, she said. And it will relocate programs focused on recruitment of adoptive and foster care parents and foster care mentoring from its Redford site.

The lower-level suite in the building — which will soon include new signage with Judson Center’s name — is already built out for autism programs because JARC, which provides services for people with developmental disabilities, operated a similar program there up until about two years ago, Hardy-Foster said.

Judson and Child Safe Michigan, a peer agency that became a subsidiary of Judson in 2015 and has operated from its Royal Oak campus ever since, have opportunities to expand their services “but we’re struggling for space at every location we have,” she said.

With the new Farmington Hills site, Judson Center now operates from 10 locations in Genesee, Oakland, Macomb, Washtenaw and Wayne counties. It also provides home-based autism services in Livingston County, employing about 470 people across its sites.

“The opportunity presented itself (to) allow administration to pack up and leave so Royal Oak can become a program site,” Hardy-Foster said.

Since opening its doors as the Detroit Baptist Children’s Home at 13 Mile and Greenfield Road in Royal Oak in 1924, Judson has grown to provide services to over 10,000 children, adults and families each year.

Child Safe will move into the space Judson’s administrative staff now occupies. Vocational services and autism services will relocate within the other four campus buildings that used to serve as houses but have been converted to office space.

Judson and Child Safe are operating on a combined budget of about $26 million this year, up from about $22 million last year, Hardy-Foster said.