Building inner-city hope one vital job at a time

THE contractor working on a $1.5-million conversion of an old con­vent beside St. Edwards Church on Arlington Street into a social services centre is having its best year ever.

Last year, this company beat out Manitoba Public Insurance as the employer of the year by the Manitoba Apprenticeship Council and will be able to pay workers a bonus for the first year ever.

"You'd never know there was an economic downturn," Marty Don­kervoort, general manager of the renovation company, said.

It may be surprising that the com­pany -- Inner City Renovation -- was started as an experiment in 2002 that many believed would not last, let alone become an award-winning en­terprise.

The convent project is one of ICR's biggest, but it has also built the last two Assiniboine Credit Union branch­es as well as Bridgman Collaborative Architecture's office conversion of a former bank at Main Street and Hig­gins Avenue.

ICR's mandate is to help alleviate poverty in the inner city by creating quality jobs for low-income people.

In addition to the financial profit ICR generated last year, it has been so successful in its other bottom lines that Donkervoort, who was also ICR's founder, has been invited to make a presentation at the Social Enterprise World Forum in Melbourne, Aus­tralia, in October. The operating entity is "owned" 50-50, but is a charitable foundation that was formed with support from the Crocus Investment Fund and by Social Capital Partners, a Toronto­based based social finance organization run by Bill Young, an entrepreneur who made millions in the technology busi­ness at the beginning of this decade.

As important as its financial sus­tainability and profitability are, ICR's social mandate is equally important.

The company employs about 20 people, virtually all of whom reside in the inner city. About half are ab­original.

Donkervoort said ICR does not go out of its way to hire aboriginal people, but it happens to be the demo­graphic of its constituency.

"We do go out of our way to create opportunities for people who might otherwise not be employed," he said.

As far as Peter Squires is con­cerned, they also do good work.

Squires, an executive with Win­nipeg Realtors Association, is also president of Housing Opportunities Partnership (HOP), the realtors' non­profit p p7 th co b jo o fe to in th q th o th e Hwp housing renewal enterprise.

Over the last 10 years, HOP has purchased, renovated, and built about 70 homes in the West End. For the last three years, ICR has been the prime contractor for HOP.

"Their work comes in on a timely basis with good accounting for each job which is sometimes a challenge on projects like this with so many dif­ferent inputs," Squires said.

While ICR fits nicely into the real­tors' attempt to provide a social hous­ing component, it would not work if those homes didn't hold their value But Squires said not only is the quality of work up to standards, but the work has inspired other home­owners to do upgrades.

Dennis Lewycky, an official with the Canadian Union of Public Employ­ees, is chairman of the ICR board. He said he's proud to be associated with ICR because of its positive im­pact in the community. He spent his vacation working with ICR crews a couple of years ago and heard the testimony from Selkirk Avenue mer­chants about how the ripple effect of improving dilapidated housing drives out drug dealers. "I understand it's difficult to describe what we do be­cause there are so many objectives at once," Lewycky said. "We're try­ing to make money, which is realistic. We're trying to help people, which is idealistic and we are trying to do it on a self-sustaining, independent basis, which some people say is naive."

Donkervoort is retiring in a year. His successor must have a rare mix of skills that might be tough to find.

"We won't limit our search locally, but I'm not worried," Lewycky said. "We'll find someone."

martin.cash@freepress.mb.ca