McMillen Health planning Fort Wayne expansion, seeks public input
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A not-for-profit independent health education center has plans for an expansion on its Fort Wayne campus and is seeking input from the public on how the project can best serve the community.
McMillen Health provides more than 250 education programs on a variety of health-related topics to K-12 students and adults at its facility, on-site and via distance learning.
CEO Nicole Fairchild says the expansion is still in the early phases but could cost between $10 million to $15 million.
Fairchild told Inside INdiana Business the expansion is needed because they have simply run out of space in their current facility.
“Today, we have 34 staff members, and we are in a building that was meant to house 15 staff total,” she said. “So, I have crammed 34 staff members into the building; it’s 16,000 square feet. We have teaching theaters, where we teach our programs to youth and those coming in, and we have had to convert two of those spaces now for staff use and then multipurpose room.”
Fairchild said the new facility would bring multiple benefits and additions to the organization.
Founded in 1981, McMillen Health is one of just four independent independently operated health education centers in the country, according to Fairchild.
The not-for-profit offers a wide range of programs for students, including general health; drug, alcohol and tobacco use prevention; and nutrition and fitness. The organization also develops curriculum and resources for other organizations such as oral health curricula for dental schools and practices.
Fairchild noted that the organization’s ability to diversify its revenue base has led to significant growth.
“In our last year, we served just over 108,000 students. When we opened our doors back in ’81, we served 40,000 students per year,” she said. “When we opened, we had four programs. Today, we have over 250 preventive health education programs, and we’ve expanded what we do to not just serve children but also serve adults and older adults as well.”
A needed expansion
The expansion would include the construction of a second, 20,000-square-foot building adjacent to the organization’s current facility. The new facility would house administrative staff and the organization’s creative services division, as well as serve as a warehouse for all of the materials created for the various curricula kits that McMillen develops.
“We have a maintenance room that we are storing all of this in, and we just had to get a storage unit because we don’t have any space to put all of our kits,” she said. “So we are in dire need of space for storage for warehousing our curriculum. They get shipped all over the nation.”
Fairchild said they hope to include interactive nutrition programming with the new facility. That could involve a greenhouse where students could learn to plant and harvest fruits and vegetables, as well as a teaching kitchen.
“[Home economics] is essentially gone and out the window in most schools across Indiana,” she said. “We want to bring that back where students literally pick their vegetables or fruit and then we can go into the teaching kitchen theater, and be able to cut up those vegetables or cook with them in some way, shape or form.”
The idea for the teaching kitchen is to have seven kitchen areas that could also be used by adults to take cooking classes in a setting similar to what they have at home rather than an industrial-style kitchen.
Community input and fundraising
McMillen Health on Tuesday evening hosted the first in a series of listening sessions to gather feedback from members of the community and get additional ideas for the expansion.
Fairchild said community feedback has been a key part of the organization over the years as it developed new health education programs and curricula, and doing the same thing for the expansion is no different.
She noted the first listening session was very productive.
“The ideas that came out of that were things I never thought of, like a sensory garden [and] a walking trail, so that way community members could participate in walking events and maybe earn incentives for doing walking events,” she said. “Another one was garden parties. I had never even thought of garden parties, but that seemed to be the most popular one that all of the attendees were thinking of.”
Two additional listening sessions are scheduled for today and tomorrow. They will be held virtually over Zoom from 4-5 p.m. each day. You can find more information and register by clicking here.
McMillen Health is also conducting a survey with community members who would not be able to attend any of the listening sessions, and Fairchild said the early responses have been very positive.
Fairchild talked about the importance of community input.
Fairchild emphasized that there are no plans for the organization to move from its current location.
“Some of our neighbors are concerned that we are leaving southeast Fort Wayne to head north,” she said. “We are not going anywhere. We are staying right here in southeast Fort Wayne. We are very proud of where we are, and we want to continue to improve this side of town and grow it.”
The organization is currently working with Fort Wayne-based MKM Architecture + Design on the early design work for the new facility, but Fairchild said there will absolutely be a fundraising element to get the project off the ground, though details have not yet been released.
Aside from providing more space, Fairchild said one of the main goals for the organization is to bring more people, both students and adults, to the facility itself. She said of the 108,000 students served last year, only about 10,000 came to the facility because of reduced budgets in schools.
“As new things continue to come out, we continue to change and adapt to those needs and develop resources to continue to address those health education needs,” she said. “So I do foresee growth with my staff, with the services that we provide, and we are just all excited to be able to continue to meet the community’s needs.”