SANTA ROSA -- Sutter Care at Home, which recently changed its name from Sutter VNA & Hospice, is relocating its Piner Road thrift store to a larger, more visible space in northwest Santa Rosa this month.
Sutter has leased just more than 7,700 square of space at 3209 Cleveland Ave., which will house one of four Sutter VNA & Hospice thrift stores in Sonoma County. Another store is located at 510 Lewis Rd. in Santa Rosa, and the other two are in Sebastopol and Rohnert Park.
The four Sonoma County stores generate approximately $500,000 a year, all of which goes toward uncompensated care at Sutter Health facilities, according to Mathew Powonda, a spokesman for Sutter Care at Home.
"Every dollar we get from this goes to patient care," he said.
The new location was chosen for better visibility and parking and more room indoors for staff and volunteers to sort through donations. The long-vacant building previously housed a real estate office and was originally designed to be a restaurant, Mr. Powonda said. The move should be completed by the end of this month.
Sonoma County is home to four out of five such thrift stores operated by Emeryville-based Sutter Care at Home. The fifth store is in Roseville. Sonoma County has the bulk of such stores because they were originally associated with Home Hospice Sonoma County, which eventually became Sutter VNA & Hospice in 1977, according to Mr. Powonda.
Sutter Care at Home provides skilled nursing, hospice and palliative care, rehabilitation therapy, home infusion, home medical equipment and respiratory therapy, medical social work, home health aide assistance and community flu and wellness programs.
The thrift stores have minimal staffs and are manned mostly by volunteers, who logged over 32,000 hours in 2010.
The Cleveland Avenue lease was brokered by Dave Peterson, Shawn Johnson, Gary Rashe and Kevin Doran of Keegan & Coppin.
