MOSES LAKE - Grant Integrated Services' 16-bed boarding home is nearly finished.

County officials along with Moses Lake Chamber of Commerce and Grant Integrated Services members recently held a ribbon cutting ceremony for the new facility.

The roughly $1.5 million facility was largely constructed using funds from the organization along with a Strategic Infrastructure Program grant and loan.

The building will house people with mental illnesses and developmental disabilities using 12 long-term beds and four short-term beds.

Gail Goodwin, director of developmental disabilities and mental health residential services, explained the long-term beds are for permanent residents, while the short-term beds are for people staying up to 30 days.

"We have a pretty good housing continuum in the area. This is a gap we have identified," she said. "We anticipate (with) the respite beds, we'll have a place where they can go and stabilize. That is the intent for the short-term beds."

Grant Integrated Services is still waiting for a boarding home license from the state Department of Social and Health Services, Goodwin said; adding she isn't sure when it will officially open.

"The staff at Grant Mental Healthcare are excited and they are talking to people that they support that they feel might be appropriate for the program," she said. "We have five people as potential referrals at this point."

Once the home receives its license, they plan to start slowly, moving in two or three people, and adding more later, Goodwin said.

"So we can ramp up our staffing and work some of the bugs out before we're fully open," she said.

The project started in spring of 2006, when they came to look at the building which used to be located where the boarding home is now, Goodwin said. The company, which was renting the building from the county, asked to rent the building on a month-to-month basis.

"We asked if we could have it instead, so (the commissioners) said, 'Yes,'" she said. "When we started looking into it, the renovations were actually more costly than a new building."

Commissioner Cindy Carter called Goodwin the driving force behind the project, saying she would bring it to the commissioners often.

"She would come to the county commissioners with this idea and she was really excited about it, and when we receive money in the county, our allotment is usually spoken for, and if it's not already allotted out, somebody desperately needs it," she said. "So there's not a lot of money on the county level to be funding something like this. So Gail went after grants, she was denied, and the only funds we could help her with was the Strategic Infrastructure Program funds."

The facility will be a great help to the community, Carter said, pointing out it will allow people to stay in the community, rather than be moved to other counties.

"I really am excited, as well as the rest of the board," she said.