The Child Protection Center (CPC) is a place where forensic interviews of abused children take place in a child-friendly environment that reduces trauma. The project’s realization is an amazing story.
While the program was under the authority of the State of Missouri, the CPC’s funding was cut by the Governor. Faced with closing down, but knowing that Kansas City’s abused children would have no official support, the organization’s president turned the program into a not-for-profit entity and raised private funds to continue offering those services.
Generator Studio assisted CPC in setting a budget, timeline, and design concept that the organization could use for fundraising purposes. The design solution, meant to evoke the feeling of being in a tree house, uses bright colors and naturalistic themes- such as sunrays in the carpet and random size wood planking. The donor wall behind the reception desk is called the Tree of Life, incorporating engraved ‘leaves’ to recognize donors.
Because the CPC is a non-profit entity where goals for donor funding set the budget, there was no opportunity to go back to donors to ask for additional funding should the project land over budget. Given this, Generator worked closely with CPC to select a contractor, JE Dunn, who assisted with cost planning and scheduling. The atypical design-build process enabled us to control the budget and schedule as we developed the program, selected the space, and worked through design and construction documentation to ultimately deliver the new space within budget.