A resident helps unwrap the new campus with Bishop Martin. The project represents the largest expansion in the nonprofit’s 70-year history and provides additional space for its youngest residents. (Photos provided; Troy C. Hull | Catholic News Herald)
BELMONT — A giant ‘Mercy Moment’ milestone occurred June 18, as Holy Angels dedicated its Treescape Campus, celebrating the largest expansion project in the nonprofit’s 70-year history.
A ‘Mercy Moment’ is when an unexpected, perfectly timed blessing or instance of help arrives without explanation. Thousands of these moments are built into the mortar of this expansion project, which has been in the making for the past decade.
“This campus is more than a collection of beautiful buildings,” said Holy Angels’ President and CEO Kerri Massey. “It reflects what happens when love leads the way.”
Sponsored and founded by the Sisters of Mercy, Holy Angels is located on 17.5 acres in Belmont and provides care for more than 85 residents, ranging from 3 years old to 84, who have intellectual and developmental disabilities.
The Treescape Campus includes three six-bedroom homes named Maple, Magnolia and Dogwood in honor of the native trees surrounding the property. Each 6,000-square-foot, single-story home features private bedrooms, family-style living and dining spaces, multi-sensory rooms and accessible outdoor areas.
The campus also includes the new 10,000-square-foot Holy Angels Community Center, featuring a saltwater pool, a gathering space – the community’s largest – and a specialized commercial kitchen where dietary staff can create the more than 90,000 individualized meals served each year to suit residents’ dietary needs.
This summer, Holy Angels’ youngest residents, ages 3 to 19, are expected to move into their new homes on the 4.5-acre campus designed to address their intellectual and developmental disabilities and delicate medical conditions.
The timing of the opening is a ‘Mercy Moment’ in itself, as their current home was damaged by a fire last month, displacing the residents and putting them in temporary housing across campus until the expansion was ready.
Residents Wyatt and Nora, along with their families, started the ribbon-cutting ceremony by “unwrapping” the campus. Bishop Michael Martin, joined by Benedictine Abbot Placid Solari, Father Dennis Kuhn and the Sisters of Mercy, blessed the homes and gathering spaces.
In his remarks, Bishop Martin pointed out that “the residents of Holy Angels reveal to us God’s image and likeness through their different abilities” and prayed that Holy Angels would continue to challenge the world to “experience and appreciate how these children of God reflect to us God’s image and likeness in a way that we would never have imagined.”
The impact of the campus is best understood through the families whose lives it will touch. One of the most moving moments came from Sara Anderson, whose son Nolan will move into the new campus after seven years at Holy Angels.
“This has truly been a labor of love, and we should all be so proud that we were able to have a part in making this dream a reality,” Anderson said.
Another resident angel commemorated during the event was Martha, who lived at Holy Angels for 50 years before she passed away two years ago. She will forever be remembered through Martha’s Courtyard, which features five metal sculptures of her favorite animal, penguins, designed by local artist Bob Doster. Doster meticulously welded together metal resident and staff handprints to create the birds that represent Martha and her family members.
“Our children’s campus wasn’t built by one person,” Massey said. “It was built by families who shared their hopes, donors who gave generously, architects who listened carefully, construction crews who worked through heat and rain, and staff who imagined what could be.”
The project represents years of planning by Holy Angels, led by President Emeritus Regina Moody.
“Here at Treescape, our kids will get to live like other kids – with their own room, spaces that meet their unique needs and connections to nature all around them,” Moody said.
Moody recognized the organizations and individuals who helped make the project possible, including the Sisters of Mercy, the Order of Malta and the State of North Carolina.
Donors’ contributions will remain planted in the very fabric of the building, with three-dimensional flowers displaying the donors’ names affixed to the community center walls.
“This campus is rooted in the love of countless people who believed in its potential, and we know the miracles are still to come,” Massey said. “The lives that will be lived here, the memories that will be made here and the future that will take shape here are the greatest celebration of all.”
— Lisa M. Geraci
