Joliet’s Cornerstone opens $1.8 million wellness center

Cornerstone Services celebrated its new wellness center at its 777 Joyce Road location in Joliet with a ribbon-cutting and tours Tuesday.

Attendees included Joliet Mayor Terry D’Arcy and U.S. Rep. Bill Foster.

Founded in 1969, Cornerstone provides comprehensive services to people with “developmental disabilities, mental illnesses, physical disabilities and sensory impairments,” according to its website.

“One of the things we wanted to do was focus on fitness and exercise, making sure people who receive our services get to exercise all year long,” said Matthew Lanoue, coordinator of public relations for Cornerstone Services. “The streets are snowy in winter and it’s cold out, so they can’t do that. But fitness is really important, and we wanted to build a fitness center that could be used by individuals in our programs as well as our staff.”

The community’s first opportunity to see the new space will be Sept. 7, when Cornerstone holds its annual art show from 5 to 7 p.m.

Attendees may then tour the facility, buy art created by Cornerstone clients and even meet some of the artists. Proceeds benefit the artists, Lanoue said.

“We transformed this dark empty warehouse into this bright, vibrant wellness center with a fantastic fitness room with great equipment in it and a nice, beautiful conference room. You can see the forest preserve behind it. And we are just really excited about it.”

—   Matthew Lanoue, coordinator of public relations for Cornerstone Services in Joliet

Cornerstone, which has several locations in Joliet and Kankakee, previously used half the space on Joyce Road for its administrative and residential services offices and leased the other half to warehouses and other companies. The building is a former Seven Up bottling plant.

But as Cornerstone’s programs expanded and the idea of a wellness center developed, the private nonprofit organization needed all of the space, Lanoue said.

Cornerstone also needed to raise money for the project since accessible equipment is costly, Lanoue said. So in 2019, Cornerstone received some donations and put the proceeds from its spring raffle toward it, he said.

In addition, Cornerstone also contacted Designs for Dignity in Chicago, which uses “pro bono design, construction talent and donated materials to breathe new life into existing nonprofit spaces,” according to its website.

Designs for Dignity was a good fit for Cornerstones, especially since the estimated project cost was $1.8 million.

“We received all this fantastic architecture and designs services from them,” Lanoue said. “And then the pandemic hit. So everything went on hold.”

But then in April 2022, Cornerstone received a $450,000 grant from the city of Joliet that “really got this thing going,” Lanoue said.

And since the wellness center wouldn’t use all the 8,000-square-foot space, Cornerstone decided to add a conference room with a training center, too.

“We have 520 employees, so it’s really hard to get everybody in one place at one time,” Lanoue said. said. “So we talked to Bill Foster. And we met with him, and he put us down as one of the 10 projects.”

Cornerstone was also one of 10 community projects that received federal funding through Foster’s office. The check presentation of $1,050,000 was held June 6, 2022, in the empty warehouse at the time.

Last year, Cornerstone also sold its West Jefferson Street building to KodoCare but Cornerstone continued to run its job training program from that building until very recently. The job training program is now moved to Joyce Road.

“We transformed this dark empty warehouse into this bright, vibrant wellness center with a fantastic fitness room with great equipment in it and a nice, beautiful conference room,” Lanoue said. “You can see the forest preserve behind it. And we are just really excited about it.”

For information, visit cornerstoneservices.org.