116 3rd St SE
Cedar Rapids, Iowa 52401
Foundation 2 Crisis Services opens new headquarters in downtown Cedar Rapids
Historic Witwer Building gets $5.4 million renovation that ‘legitimizes crisis response’
CEDAR RAPIDS — As John Bigler’s friends and peers returned home from the Vietnam War, some struggled with substance use and ended up in emergency rooms.
Bigler, then a 23-year-old Coe College graduate in 1970, would go to the hospital and help talk them down, especially when psychedelics were involved. Seeing the war’s toll on them, Bigler said he and other peers decided: “Let’s organize a solution to this — not only for our fellow students that we’re finding, but also for the community that are having challenges.”
So Bigler helped launch Foundation 2 that year. Bigler, now 77, said the goal was to offer free access to help in a peer-led program where volunteers potentially could relate to what callers were experiencing and find a practical solution.
Since 1970, Foundation 2 Crisis Services has provided crisis support in Cedar Rapids through a 24/7 crisis support line, emergency youth shelter, crisis mental health support and other services. It started in a bungalow lent by Coe College, with an approximately $30,000 annual budget, Bigler said.
More than 50 years later, the organization runs on a $10.536 million annual operating budget and a footprint extending beyond Linn County. Between July 1, 2022, and June 30, 2023, Foundation 2 responded to more than 87,700 crisis contacts and provided almost 3,000 in-person mobile crisis outreach dispatches.
Staff now have one central facility to serve as its hub for community trainings, outreach and staff meetings. Foundation 2 marked this growth Tuesday with the opening of its new headquarters after a $5.4 million renovation of the Witwer Building at 305 Second Ave. SE in downtown Cedar Rapids.
How Foundation 2 got its name
The founding members were going to call it the “Second Foundation” after science fiction writer Isaac Asimov’s trilogy with that name, founding member John Bigler said. The founders wanted Linn County to partner as the organization’s governing board. In pitching this partnership, one founding member — nervous about the presentation — flipped the name and called it Foundation 2.
The building offers offices and meeting spaces for many of the organization’s 100 full-time and 80 part-time employees. The new headquarters consolidates what used to be five office spaces spread out between Cedar Rapids and Hiawatha.
Foundation 2’s move into the building also gives a boost to downtown, bringing employees there at a time when COVID-19 has left many offices largely void of workers and some employers have left the city center. It also allows Foundation 2 to be closer to other providers, such as Waypoint Services, that its clients may access.
The historic facility had served as a courthouse and post office, a bus station, senior day center, grocery store, restaurant and more since the 1880s. Foundation 2 purchased it in October 2022.
The project largely was supported through grants from the federal American Rescue Plan Act dollars awarded by the Linn County Board of Supervisors, the city of Cedar Rapids and the state’s Nonprofit Innovation Fund. Corporate and private gifts to the Building a Foundation to Mental Wellness capital campaign also gave a boost.
A room to meet with individuals at the Foundation 2 Crisis Services Headquarters in Cedar Rapids, Iowa on Tuesday, April 30, 2024. (Savannah Blake/The Gazette)
A conference and training room at the Foundation 2 Crisis Services Headquarters in Cedar Rapids, Iowa on Tuesday, April 30, 2024. (Savannah Blake/The Gazette)
A conference room at the Foundation 2 Crisis Services Headquarters in Cedar Rapids, Iowa on Tuesday, April 30, 2024. (Savannah Blake/The Gazette)
One of the office spaces at the Foundation 2 Crisis Services Headquarters in Cedar Rapids, Iowa on Tuesday, April 30, 2024. (Savannah Blake/The Gazette)
The Fostering Futures Store room that supplies clothing and household items at the Foundation 2 Crisis Services Headquarters in Cedar Rapids, Iowa on Tuesday, April 30, 2024. (Savannah Blake/The Gazette)
The Fostering Futures Store room that supplies clothing and household items at the Foundation 2 Crisis Services Headquarters in Cedar Rapids, Iowa on Tuesday, April 30, 2024. (Savannah Blake/The Gazette)
‘Dream come true’ for staff
The renovated building is filled with calming blue and green hues and natural light. The space is complete with natural elements like plants and comfortable seating to provide a trauma-informed environment for staff and clients.
On the second floor, offices surround a gathering space and an oasis where light trickles in from the roof and exposed brick hints of the building’s history. A “Legacy Wall” honors those who have died by suicide and others dedicated to the organization’s mission.
“It is important to us that people will see their name and say their name,” said Elizabeth Ray, a past Foundation 2 board president. She used its services in 1979 when her then-boyfriend died by suicide. “They lived. Their lives are not defined by how they died, but by how they are lovingly remembered.”
A triage and consultation room allows Foundation 2 staff to privately support community members who arrive in person. A donation closet houses free items such as bedding and kitchen items for those participating in the Fostering Futures program, which serves youths aging out of foster care.
Third-floor space provides a dedicated room for staff to decompress, more offices, a kitchen space and a media room to shoot videos and create other multimedia projects.
Chief Executive Officer Emily Blomme said the new space “is a dream come true for our agency.”
“It takes a special kind of person to sit with people in their darkest moments,” Blomme said. “But our team — nearly 180 strong — provide this care around the clock. They are worthy of a space. They are worthy of this space that gives them the tools they need to do their jobs well and be a support to people in this community and beyond.”
‘Legitimizes crisis response’
Intending to launch a telephone line primarily for those dealing with a substance use crisis, Bigler said the first call Foundation 2 received was related to suicide. The center opened each day about noon and closed about 2 a.m. There weren’t enough staff to cover the whole night then.
“Once you open up the phone, you don’t have control over who calls or how many calls,” Bigler said. “ … Whatever you think your mission might be, if you’re going to take responsibility for answering the phone, you have to be ready to do what you can, whatever that is. That broadened our awareness and our focus right away.”
A small group of professionals including a social worker, a University of Iowa graduate student and a Coe psychology professor trained the first supervisors. To train the volunteers, Bigler said they would document the calls and use them in training to help them navigate new or uncomfortable scenarios.
Thousands of calls came in during that first year when the organization served only Linn County. With that first year underway, Bigler wrote a grant in 1971 to start the “Special Problems Center,” the state’s first residential treatment center, near Mercy Medical Center. It resulted from the amount of drug issues Foundation 2 saw, as there was no place to offer treatment, Bigler said.
Eventually, the organization’s focus narrowed to mental health crises. Bigler left in 1973 to become the alcohol and drug treatment services director at a community mental health center in Walworth County, Wis. He never returned to his original career plan of becoming a history teacher, but later retired as the same county’s assistant director of health and human services.
Being in town from Lake Geneva, Wis., to tour the new building, Bigler said he was moved that so many people held Foundation 2 together over the decades. Fifty-four years ago, he couldn’t conceive of this building taking shape.
“You do it at the time because it’s the right thing to do,” he said.
Blomme said there are changes afoot in the crisis continuum and the way Iowa serves its most vulnerable populations.
“We are here for those changes, and with a building like this, we are here for the long haul,” Blomme said. “A space as lovely as this not only legitimizes crisis response for the critical service it is, but legitimizes our teams who do this work day in and day out to keep people in the communities we serve healthier, more whole and with hope in their future.”
Comments: (319) 398-8494; marissa.payne@thegazette.com
Daily Newsletters