Refuge office gets help moving

Gila Ridge High School football players and Youth Conservative Corps members helped move the Kofa Wildlife Refuge headquarters Tuesday to 9300 E. 28th St.

Susanna Henry, Kofa National Wildlife Refuge manager, said, "We are going back to the idea of having an administrative complex with more than one refuge. It is going to be the administrative overhead for Imperial, Kofa and Cibola refuges.

"But Imperial and Cibola will still have offices out on their refuge. This will be the only office that Kofa has."

The front of the new building says Southwest Arizona National Wildlife Refuge Complex, with all three refuges' names underneath it, said Henry.

Since 1953, the Kofa Wildlife headquarters could be found at the corner of 4th Avenue and 1st Street on less than two acres.

The new building sits on 10 acres and is around 4,500 square feet. It will have an exhibit space, a bookstore, a conference facility and a reception office.

"In the old office we didn't have a space for meeting," said Mitch Ellis, project leader for the Southwest Arizona National Wildlife Complex. Along with having an administrative overhead, Ellis said, "We moved to be closer to the refuges, but be accessible to the public and host meetings."

The office will "provide information about all three refuges and encourage people to visit them," said Henry. "We manage a lot of really beautiful land along the Colorado River and also on the desert where Kofa is. A lot of people spend time visiting the refuges - boating and swimming, and of course in the fall, folks start to visit Kofa Refuge and other desert refuges."

However, Henry said, the move has a few months to go before it is complete. But thanks to the help of 12 Gila Ridge football players and five Youth Conservation Corps crew members from the Sonny Bono Salton Sea National Wildlife Refuge, the move is going more quickly.

"One of the members of the (football) team is the son of our administrative technician, Debbie Pike," said Henry. "So she knew that the coach at Gila Ridge High School would be able to encourage some of the players to do this community service."

Although the players had practice that same evening, they said they enjoyed helping the community.

"I just like helping people. It is just something I've been doing since I was little," said Andrew Schmelzinger, a Gila Ridge football player.

Football player David Acosta said, "I thought it would be a good opportunity (to do community service) ... It's going pretty good since we are working as a team. It's all (about) teamwork."

"It's great to have the kids out here helping with all that," said Ellis. "It's not just great for the staff to have the help, but it saves the taxpayer a lot of money. We didn't contract a professional mover. What we did was use volunteer help to do it."

The $2.5 million complex is scheduled to have an open house in October once the building has been set up properly and the landscaping has been completed, said Henry.

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Jennifer Lovell can be reached at jlovell@yumasun.com or 539-6849