A nonprofit group dedicated to helping refugees and immigrants in the Tri-Cities is getting a new home. The groundbreaking for B5’s new 4,000-square-foot facility was July 11.

The building — called the Community Learning Center — will help the nonprofit with its mission of welcoming and supporting refugees and immigrants as they forge new lives.

“Welcoming them into our community and being a place where they can build community and we can build community together” is vitally important, said Theresa Roosendaal, B5 executive director. “Helping them know that they belong here — that’s the opportunity we have with this place.”

B5 used to be called Family Learning Center, but the nonprofit changed its name after a re-visioning process. B5 is the unit number of one of the apartments near Park Middle School in Kennewick where the group has operated for years, and it’s long been the group’s nickname.

Since it formed in 2009, B5 has helped more than 2,000 refugees and immigrants.

It provides a range of services for kids and adults alike, from Ready for Kindergarten workshops for parents, to afterschool programs, tutoring, digital literacy and employment skills assistance for teens, high school and college mentoring, and English language classes for adults.

B5 partners with the Kennewick School District, Educational Service District 123 and the state Department of Social and Health Services, and it has more than a dozen staff, largely working part time.

The new community learning center — at 715 S. Jean Place in Kennewick — will have more room for the kids and adults who come in seeking support and a place to belong.

It will include classrooms, gathering space for events and sharing, office space, a computer lab, space for childcare during adult classes, a kitchen for cooking classes and food-sharing events, and more.

Archibald & Company Architects handled design; Elite Construction & Development is the contractor.

Trinidad Garibay, chief executive officer of the Pasco-based Elite Construction, said the B5 Community Learning Center is the kind of project his company likes to get behind, as it fits with Elite’s guiding principles of creating opportunity, inspiring and lifting up the underserved.

“Our motto is ‘work hard, stay humble.’ That resonates loud and clear for me. Work hard, stay humble and let the work do the talking,” Garibay said. “We plan to continue to embrace that and let it continue to take us to cool places and meet great people and do great things in the community.”

He said Elite supports B5’s mission and has made a five-year monetary pledge to the group.

CJ Black, the project executive for Elite, said he anticipates construction of the new building to take about eight months, meaning it should be ready to open in early spring of next year.

“We’re excited to get some shovels in the ground and get moving,” Black said, adding, “(the building) is going to expand the people they can help and the resources they can offer.”

B5 has been raising money for the last two years, and it’s reached 90% of its $2.1 million community fundraising goal and obtained $750,000 in state capital funding. The building price tag is about $1.9 million; money brought in over that amount will provide an operating reserve for the building.

B5 is calling the capital campaign, “Bridges to New Beginnings,” and it’s looking for donors to get it over the finish line. To help, go to thriveatb5.org/capital-campaign.

B5 grew out of a ministry to Karen families who’d been displaced from Myanmar. It now serves refugees and immigrants from all over the world, including those who escaped war in Afghanistan and Ukraine.

The current headquarters are in an apartment complex where many refugee families are placed after moving to the Tri-Cities. On most afternoons, the units are abuzz with people.

“They come from very desperate situations, and they’re coming into a hugely challenging life (that involves starting over in a new place). That’s what started the work,” Roosendaal said. “As I got to know people, and they’d share their hopes and dreams, they’d say, ‘If was just us, we’d never have done this. It’s for our kids.’ To be able to stand with them – that’s what this place has been about.”

The new Community Learning Center will be next to the Boys & Girls Clubs of Benton and Franklin Counties’ Eerkes Family Branch and near B5’s current apartment home.

Go to: thriveatb5.org.