Purpose Built Beats Retrofit: A Look at Forward Stride
Purpose Built Beats Retrofit: A Look at Forward Stride
Forward Stride sits off Farmington Road in Beaverton and serves more than 200 clients a week through equine assisted services. The programs range from therapeutic riding and vaulting to physical, occupational and speech therapy that uses equine movement as a treatment tool, and equine assisted psychotherapy with a licensed mental health professional and a certified equine specialist.
What interests us as much as the programs is the property itself. Six mini barns with shared turnouts, additional pastures and shelters, and multiple arenas.
Multiple arenas is an access decision
It would be cheaper to build one arena. A place that serves 200 people a week across therapy, recreation, mental health and youth programs cannot run all of that through a single space.
Multiple arenas means a physical therapy session does not have to compete with a vaulting class. It means a participant who is overwhelmed by noise has somewhere quieter. It means a program can grow without pushing another one out.
Choice of space is access. Not everyone needs the same environment on the same day, and a property with only one setting forces everyone into the same conditions.
We are planning the same principle into our site layout: quieter areas and social areas, sites spaced for privacy, and gathering space that does not have to be the only place people can be together. It is written into the values behind the project.
Retrofit thinking versus purpose built thinking
Most accessibility work in hospitality is retrofit. A ramp gets added to a building that was finished in 1974. A bathroom gets widened by taking a foot from a closet. It helps, and it is worth doing, and it will always be a compromise with a floor plan that was drawn for someone else.
Forward Stride describes a facility thoughtfully designed to support its programs. That order matters. Program first, then building.
Lucky Star Retreats has one real advantage right now, and it is that nothing has been built yet. We are still evaluating sites in the Portland metro region and beyond. Every path surface, unit placement, bathhouse location and parking decision is still a decision, not a repair. We wrote about that window in Building With Community Before Opening.
The money model deserves attention too
Forward Stride states that thanks to donors, most of its clients do not pay the full cost of their programs.
That is a nonprofit structure and we are a business, so we cannot copy it directly. We can take the underlying point seriously. If a service is only available to people who can pay full freight, the access conversation is incomplete. Our current plan includes a range of lodging types at different rates for exactly that reason, from simpler accessible tent sites through to glamping domes. Those are targets, not promises, and they will move as the property and the buildout become real.
An open question for practitioners
Colleen's background is in movement, massage therapy and neurological focused care, so the idea that a setting can be part of a therapeutic experience is not abstract for us. It is the reason wellness space is in the long term plan at all.
If you run equine, movement, or therapy programs in the Portland metro area and you have ever wanted somewhere your participants could stay overnight instead of driving in each morning, tell us what that would need to include. We are early enough that the answer can still shape the drawing.