University of Virginia Facilities Management employees wielded paint brushes and rollers at The Haven, a day shelter and housing resource center in downtown Charlottesville, applying the final coat of paint to the building’s first real renovation in 15 years.
“This is huge, a project of this scale,” Owen Brennan, executive director of The Haven, said. “It would be very costly for us to do it on our own. The UVA Facilities team has taken on the project, managing all the way down to these volunteer days to do the painting. It is a huge gift for us.”
About 27 Facilities Management employees were involved in the renovation project, including planners and the workers who spent three volunteer days, each four hours long, wrapping up the second phase.
Facilities Management volunteer Sandra LaFontaine cleans windows during a renovation at The Haven. (Photo by Matt Riley, University Communications)
“For the past year and a half, myself and Alex Dalton, a construction administration manager, have been working with The Haven and the Building Goodness Foundation to establish a maintenance and renewal plan, and we’ve started implementing that plan over the past couple of months,” said Abby Tanner, assistant director for project management at Facilities Management’s Capital Construction and Renovation Health Systems division.
The project included replacing the flooring, renovating restrooms and painting the dining room. The volunteers will also work on light fixtures and build a dividing wall between the food service line and the dining area.
“We installed the stainless-steel surface bar that’s near the food service line,” Tanner said, “and a new bottle fill station. Several projects were scooped together into phase one. Right now, we are in phase two, applying the final coats of paint. And the guests actually voted on the color selections we are now painting the walls. They’re very excited about it.”
Annie Lopez, a volunteer from Â鶹ĆĆ˝â°ć Facilities Management, tapes around the menu board in anticipation of painting the wall in the day shelter area. (Photo by Matt Riley, University Communications)
Tanner said the Facilities Management employees worked with several contracting firms on the project, including the Barton Malow construction firm, which dedicated significant volunteer hours to advance several skilled trade projects, plus design firm Perkins + Will, Valley Engineering, BR+A consulting engineers and developers JLL.
Brennan estimated the value of the renovation at around $100,000, with the actual costs running around $75,000 thanks to time and labor donated by Building Goodness Foundation, UVA Facilities, Barton Mallow, Moore’s Electric, Perkins + Will and DMA Flooring. He said The Haven serves about 80 people a day, and around 400 unique individuals in a year. He said the renovations were supported by funding from the First Presbyterian Church, the Perry Foundation, the Blue Ridge Area Food Bank and the Building Goodness Foundation, which introduced Tanner and Facilities Management to The Haven in 2024.
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