Posted by Jim at July 28th, 2005

ACCESS moved out of 207 East Fulton today. It’s the ending of a process that began in December with GRACE (my primary employer) moving out.

GRACE and ACCESS moved in to 207 Fulton together a few years ago. At the time it felt momentous. Both organizations had been together in the basement of 38 West Fulton underneath San Chez Bistro. While a good place to be, it did have a few problems. For one, it was a basement and smelled exceptionally musty. For another, it was so easy during the winter to come in before it was light, leave after it was dark, and (unless you went out for lunch) never see sunlight the entire day.

Let’s not even mention the time that fluids from the bar leaked through the ceiling into our conference room.

All in all, I didn’t feel sad to leave that building. Far from it, we were moving into the top floor of a building that looked over downtown Grand Rapids. We could see rain. We could see sun. I considered putting together a GRACE webcam, allowing anyone to peer out our windows.

Organizationally, it meant that ACCESS and GRACE could stop paying the city for parking, a multi-thousand dollar expense.

We (GRACE and ACCESS both) assumed that we’d be there forever.

As it turned out, we weren’t even there four years. GRACE and ACCESS began to realize that rent plus other expenses more than made up for the lack of parking fees. This November, GRACE’s board decided to move GRACE’s offices into various churches around the city, locating me in my house.

After that, an office chosen for two organizations became the office of one (ACCESS). Realizing that they could get a better deal somewhere else, ACCESS began looking around, finally settling on Goodwill’s Urban Center.

It’s a strange thing. As an ecumenical organization, GRACE tries to get Grand Rapids’ churches (of all denominations) involved in social problems. They helped start ACCESS, an organization that coordinates Kent County’s church food pantries. Since then (slightly more than 20 years ago), GRACE and ACCESS have always shared an office. If you worked for GRACE you eventually got to know people in ACCESS and vice versa. We had monthly meetings/potlucks to discuss office issues and talk, a combined Christmas party, and attended each others’ events.

This afternoon we had all of ACCESS’ stuff out of the building by 2 p.m. No papers. No computers. No people. The church that owns the building hasn’t been able to rent the GRACE side yet, so that’s empty too.

As the others drove off to Goodwill, I made a last round of the office, checking for anything anyone forgot. Alone on the third floor, I remembered our hopes for the place, thinking about walking into the building when it was still full of the former owners’ files, planning what we needed for the cabling, and the open house celebrating our arrival.

I walked through GRACE’s side of the office, noticing where my name used to be outside my cubicle, ghosts of former co-workers in my mind.

It’s not bad the way things worked out. On a financial level, I’m better off now than I was when I worked solely in that office. On a personal level, I enjoy consulting and the control of my life it brings. Even with ACCESS moving and GRACE spread all over, I’ll still see many of the same people.

Still, there’s something I miss.