MALONE — Homeward Bound Adirondacks, a non-profit group that organizes veterans retreats on a property near Lake Titus will host an open house this weekend.
Homeward Bound Adirondacks will welcome the community from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday to the Sgt. Carlton A. Clark Veterans Center off of State Route 30.
Valerie Ainsworth, executive director of Homeward Bound Adirondacks, said at 1 p.m. there will be a dedication ceremony held at the property.
“We are going to be offering tours of the whole property because there’s the main site where we have the main building but we also have ponds in the back where our camping is set up,” Ainsworth told the Telegram, “We will have golf carts so we can bring people back and show them the property. We also have golf carts available for anybody with mobility issues just to get around the property.”
Ainsworth said a lot of work has gone into the property over the last five years and she is looking forward to welcoming the community in to see what has been accomplished.
“It’s very exciting. We are really happy that we are going to use the property, up to this point we have had to use different venues that were all wonderful, Camp Overlook and Camp Dudley, different places but we were sort of at the mercy of their schedules and now that we have our own place we can hold retreats year-round whenever we want,” she said, “We can do day activities up here and if we have a veteran in crisis we can bring them up here and go for a hike. It’s so exciting that we have our own place now that we can use year-round.”
Ainsworth said there will food and refreshments at no cost to the guests at Saturday’s open house.
According to Ainsworth, the property has 104 acres and Homeward Bound Adirondacks hosted a ribbon-cutting ceremony in June in 2021 after purchasing the property, and said the group has paid off the property’s mortgage.
“It has a lot of nice trails on the property so we can have walking trails, hiking, we can hike up a mountain, cross-country ski and snowshoe,” she said, explaining the property is used year-round, “We have found that a lot of veterans need our services more during the long winter months and we wanted to make sure we had a facility that’s available year-round.”
Over the last couple years the group has worked to drill a well, add a utility building and get an ADA accessible cabin set up and ready to go with plans for four more cabins too, according to Ainsworth.
“We have the camping sites on the second and third ponds on the property, we have tent platforms and cots and everything for camping retreats,” she said.
Ainsworth said a lot of money needed for work on the property has come from fundraising efforts and donations, adding Homeward Bound Adirondacks also received a grant from the state for the property’s utility building, in addition to funding from the Adirondack Foundation that went towards the site’s ADA cabin.
“There’s been a lot of very generous donations from the community,” she said, including a recent effort to raise $45,000 to finish work on the site’s septic and water filtration systems, “So many people pitched in banks, CrossFit Malone and we had an anonymous donor who did a $10,000 match. We actually exceeded our goal of $45,000 there were so many generous donors.”
This week, Homeward Bound Adirondacks received a $5,000 donation from SeaComm with the funding going to help the group’s peer support, and outdoor healing programs with $10,000 in Federal Home Loan bank grant funds going to the group from TruNorthern Federal Credit Union.
Ainsworth said parking at the retreat’s open house on Saturday may be limited and visitors may have to park off site and take a shuttle to the property if it gets too crowded, adding the address for the center is 12801 State Route 30 but GPS sometimes brings people a little south of the property.
“We are welcoming the whole community this weekend and we want everybody to see what we have accomplished. I’m really looking forward to everybody being able to see the property and kind of get an appreciation for it,” she said, “It’s a beautiful piece of land that has different feels to it, the main area is kind of open and then you go back in the woods and there’s more solitude and a peaceful feeling with the second pond. When you get up to the third pond you really feel like you are away from everything.”
Based in Saranac Lake, Homeward Bound Adirondacks offers retreats for veterans and their families at no cost. The organization also offers transportation to medical and mental health appointments, crisis outreach, and referral services.