Joy. That’s the word new Executive Director Riannon Bardsley used to describe Max Higbee Center.
Walking into the facility at 1400 N. State St., you’ll likely be welcomed by several members, saying hello and greeting you by name if they know it. Staff members compare the experience of walking into the center to the sitcom “Cheers”: “Some days you walk in, [and] it’s like the theme song is playing,” Program Director Alyssa Jones said.
It’s the “Max Higbee magic,” Bardsley calls it. Named after a Western Washington University professor, the center opened in 1983 as the “Drop-In Center,” before becoming Max Higbee Center in 1991 to honor Higbee. It provides recreational opportunities to anyone over the age of 16 with developmental or intellectual disabilities.
Bardsley recently took the reigns of the organization after the former executive director of 10 years, Kait Whiteside, resigned in October. Bardsley hopes to continue cultivating joy and promoting inclusive recreation at the center, and perhaps even expand it. But she knows she has big shoes to fill.
Whiteside guided the organization through a major capital campaign, the construction of a new space on State Street, and COVID-19 challenges, to a place of stability. She told Cascadia Daily News she felt the center was ready for new leadership, and now plans to take some time to recreate and relax as she considers her next steps.
Bardsley takes the helm of the organization after stints working in the Office of Homeless Youth and as executive director of Northwest Youth Services until 2019. She’s looking to include members’ voices in more of the organization’s work, improve staff salaries, expand to more of the county and continue advocating for more accessibility in public spaces.
Finding acceptance
One of Max Higbee’s primary functions is introducing more independence and connection into the lives of its members. Member Suzanna Rodriguez, 37, said she didn’t have friends before she joined Max Higbee eight years ago. “Now, I have so many friends,” she said.
Rodriguez said her connections at the center helped her get through the death of her mother, and that she feels happy every time she’s there.
Member Michael, 23, who also said he feels “really happy” at Max Higbee, said he wants to see the center receive more funds so they can have more members. CDN is withholding his last name at his family’s request.
The center also helps out families and caregivers. Andrea Shenton, whose older brother was one of the first members of Max Higbee in 1989 and whose son is also a member, said Max Higbee gives families a break to go grocery shopping or do other essential tasks, knowing that their loved one is in good hands.
“Max Higbee Center is a place for people to be themselves and to be fully accepted for who they are,” Whiteside said. “I felt that when I walked in the doors, I was fully accepted for me, Kait, and I did not have to be anyone but me, and I think everybody feels something very similar.”
‘The world needs a gazillion Kait Whitesides’
When Whiteside started at Max Higbee Center in 2014, most people didn’t know what the center was or what it did. The nonprofit had recently moved to its Bay Street location, where it led two main programs, serving more than 100 individuals on a weekly basis, with a team of five staff.
Now, as Whiteside moves on, she leaves behind an organization that has expanded to daily programming, has an operational budget of nearly $1 million, employs 19 staff, and has one-on-one training opportunities for members. Max Higbee has 200 members, with 50 on the waitlist. Whiteside said she knows people who have moved to Bellingham specifically for the center.
“There’s no place like it anywhere,” board member Naaman Hinton said.
In 2019, the center created a waitlist for programs for the first time in the organization’s history based on physical capacity. That year, the organization launched a capital campaign to move into and build a bigger space. The project broke ground in February 2020, then COVID-19 hit.
“I remember thinking to myself, ‘Why am I building a bigger space when we can’t do any in-person programs and with a lot of uncertainty about when we’d be able to hold in-person programs again?’” Whiteside said. “But I’m very glad that we moved forward and continued with construction.”
When the center began to fill up as COVID-19 restrictions lifted, Whiteside said she felt “pride and happiness and joy, that the initial vision that the community and the board and I had for this space was being fulfilled and realized.”
Shenton said Whiteside put her “heart” into the center, particularly with fundraising and constructing the new building in the middle of the pandemic.
“I just think the world needs a gazillion Kait Whitesides,” Shenton said. “She just makes a difference in big ways and in small.”
Program Manager Doug Sacrison said there were “innumerable times” over the years that he was grateful she was his boss, noting her kindness and resilience.
“I will forever be indebted to her and forever be grateful that I got to work for her for that long,” he said.
Jones said she feels confident that the work Whiteside has done “is still going to continue and be tended and grow.”
New director brings fresh goals
Through a careful recruitment process, the board selected Bardsley as the executive director. But Bardsley isn’t new to Max Higbee — her daughter has been a member for several years now.
Hinton said he felt Bardsley’s “genuine love” for Max Higbee throughout the interview process: “It’s very evident her heart is all in it,” he said.
Bardsley said Whiteside left her a “gift” of a stable, healthy organization.
“I was an executive director for 10 years prior to this, and I walked in here and just, [said] ‘Kait, you did it,'” Bardsley said.
Whiteside applied for a grant before she left the organization to put together a Community Advisory Board to advise the organization at all levels. Bardsley said she’s excited to see that through and put the board together.
At her previous job at the Office of Homeless Youth, Bardsley worked to start a Youth Action Board, made up of 16- to 24-year-olds who previously, or are currently, experiencing homelessness. When the board launched, Bardsley said they had about 13 youth involved. By the end, there were 100.
She said she considered the board her “bosses.” At Max Higbee, Bardsley said she wants to see the Community Advisory Board work in a similar way, by having people with lived experience guide the organization.
Both Whiteside and Bardsley invoked the phrase: “nothing about us without us” in conversations with CDN. “So often, people are left out of conversations about their own lives, and I want to help shift that,” Bardsley said.
Charlotte Alden is CDN’s general assignment/enterprise reporter; reach her at charlottealden@cascadiadaily.com; 360-922-3090 ext. 123.
