By Michael Lafleur, mlafleur@lowellsun.com
LOWELL -- The Cambodian Mutual Assistance Association of Greater Lowell has moved into a new headquarters building.
The state's largest Southeast Asian social service agency now is located at 120 Cross St., inside the former Pappas Funeral Home, in the new Asian business plaza located off Broadway Street in Lowell's Acre neighborhood.
CMAA officials earlier this year sold their previous headquarters at 165 Jackson St., in the former Hamilton Manufacturing Co. complex, to the Boston-based Architectural Heritage Foundation for $805,000. AHF officials have plans to convert the former CMAA building, as well as the adjacent Adden Furniture Co. building, into housing.
Vong Ros, CMAA executive director since 2002, said the move saved the agency thousands of dollars in utilities costs as paying for gas and electricity at the former headquarters building was a perennial budgetary drain. Ros said the rent for the new building would have been $4,700 per month but the shopping plaza's landlord, Southeast Asian real estate investor Chou Huynh, of Dracut, is giving CMAA a 50 percent discount on its four-year lease.
Today, the CMAA has staff of 11 and a roughly $720,000 budget, down from a high of $2.2 million five years ago.
Ros said the competition for new grants has been "fierce" as federal, state and private funding sources have dried up in recent years.
The recent loss of roughly $200,000 in subcontractor funding from a U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention grant to the Lowell Community Health Center has not helped the CMAA's financial picture.
Federal officials opted not to renew the health center program and funding ended last Sunday, at the close of the 2007 federal fiscal year. Ros said finding another means to support the health screenings and other services that grant once supplied is his top priority.
"We see this as a major issue that's impacting our community, but we don't have resources," he said.
However, the CMAA was recently awarded a five-year, $1.7 million grant from the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement that will allow the agency to dole out matching funds to individuals and families who are saving to buy their first home, start a business or attend college. CMAA officials will be able to match up to $2,000 per individual and $4,000 per family.
The CMAA's other main offerings are English as a second language classes provided in partnership with Lowell Adult Education, using teachers from that program of the Lowell School Department and young parenting and general equivalency diploma courses funded by the state Department of Transitional Assistance.
This story appeared in the Lowell Sun on Saturday, October 6, 2007