Temple Center plans move funded by $1 million grant

Temple Memorial Rehabilitation Center CEO Sandy Varner, left, and TMRC Marketing and Events Director Gina Parish pose for a photo during the announcement of a $1 million grant award Monday at Texarkana Country Club in Texarkana, Ark. The grant will pay for moving TMRC from 1315 Walnut St. to a remodeled office building at 1710 Moores Lane.
Temple Memorial Rehabilitation Center CEO Sandy Varner, left, and TMRC Marketing and Events Director Gina Parish pose for a photo during the announcement of a $1 million grant award Monday at Texarkana Country Club in Texarkana, Ark. The grant will pay for moving TMRC from 1315 Walnut St. to a remodeled office building at 1710 Moores Lane.

A grant of $1 million will pay for a new facility for Texarkana, Texas' Temple Memorial Rehabilitation Center.

TMRC will purchase an office building at 1710 Moores Lane and remodel it "into a state of the art pediatric therapy facility this fall," according to a statement.

The center's available space will increase from 10,000 to 15,000 square feet, a much-needed improvement, CEO Sandy Varner said. TMRC's patient count has increased by about 75% in the past five years, and the staff has almost doubled in the past decade.

"We looked at renovating what we have, and the cost was prohibitive," she said.

Remodeling of the new building will not be extensive. The space will be well-suited to its new purpose, Varner said.

"There's not a lot to do. We have to adapt it, of course, from a law office to a rehab center. We have to install a bathroom and do a covered area where people can drop kids off.

"We took a tour, and the therapists said, 'We could not have designed a better building.' There's great open space and some great individual space," she said.

Another organization is planning to buy the center's current building at 1315 Walnut St., Varner said, but she declined to offer any details.

The Lufkin, Texas-based TLL Temple Foundation awarded the grant.

TMRC was founded in 1952 to help families affected by polio. When the polio epidemic ended, the center began to focus on children born with disabilities and those who are behind in development.

The Temple Home, forerunner to today's TMRC, was in the Temple family's former home near St. Michael Hospital when it was in Texarkana, Ark. The center moved into the Walnut Street facility in 1978.

The center's focus is pediatric patients, and it provides occupational, physical, speech and autism therapies to about 100 children a day, regardless of ability to pay, according to its website.

TMRC's mission is "to provide exceptional services to ensure that all people with disabilities, special needs, or functional limitations have equal opportunities to live, learn, work and play in their community," according to the site, which calls the center "the only non-profit rehabilitation facility in this area that specializes in pediatric therapy."

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