At this stage in my career, I was quite content to focus on having the best clinicians in the area and dedicating ourselves to helping youth, adults, and families. Over the past 12 years, we have developed an excellent reputation in the area that I am so proud of. We have a great office location and space. I had no plans to move and expand.
However, life has other plans. My former landlord was a family business with two brothers and one sister. They understandably were ready to retire and sold the building. After talking with the new landlord, I realized that coasting was no longer an option, and something needed to change. So, I did some soul and property searching. Any new office had to be close to our current office as most of our families are from North Royalton, Parma, Strongsville, and Broadview Heights. Most importantly, we had to make sure that any new space still felt welcoming and comfortable.
Fortunately, I found such a place at 12608 State Road, North Royalton. We will be in the front of the Lisco Heating and Cooling building. We are expanding our office from 2000 sq feet to 3400 sq feet with space for a group therapy / conference room and two additional offices. We have found a fabulous clinical social worker, Lindsey Knoepp, LISW, who will be joining us full time starting in the summer and taking one of those new offices. I am confident we will find more amazing clinicians for the additional space.
Change is challenging. We at RPA have had a wide range of emotions to the notion of change and moving offices. Just like many of you, we too are creatures of habit. We want the new office to still resemble the office space you are used to. We have kept the color scheme and most of the furniture the same. I even ordered the exact same blinds. Staff have been integral to every stage of the remodel. For example, one of the areas of debate at the current office is the lighting. No way was I choosing the lighting for our new office! Multiple people were involved in that decision. Every change has pros and cons. We are not able to have our lobby as wide open as it currently is, though it will have more seating. A definite pro is that we will have 24 parking spaces allocated to us, so no more evening parking problems.
We plan to move to 12608 State Road the weekend of July 12-14 and open for business on Monday July 15th. We will have some hiccups along the way and needed changes once we move. I feel a mix of nervous and excited with excited now being the dominant emotion. I hope that you are comfortable in our new space and patient with us as we make the transition. We plan to keep everyone informed. Look for signs to go up at the new office the first week of July. If you see my light blue SUV in the new parking lot, feel free to stop by and take a look inside as we renovate and prepare to move. We look forward to expanding our space and expanding our ability to help more individuals and families.