After 23 years of serving the community, building its reputation with community members and supporters, and gaining experience and expertise, CASA is poised to step to a higher level of program quality, impact, and outreach, and to fulfill its potential to be a state-wide organization with a larger than state-wide impact.  To meet this goal, CASA must build capacity in its programs, centralize its administration functions, and enhance its physical space to provide services.

As part of its effort to enhance its physical space for service provision and program operation, and in an effort to locate its headquarters in one of the neediest neighborhoods in Maryland, CASA has identified a site to serve as its permanent home.  Originally named Langley Park, the McCormick Mansion is a three-story Georgian Revival brick and concrete home designed in 1924 by George Oakley Totten, a prominent Washington architect.  Once part of a 565-acre estate, the building is now the centerpiece of a 24-acre garden apartment complex of 587 low-income units, and is within walking distance of an additional 1,500 low-income households.  The building is structurally sound, but is deteriorating due to severe water damage, vandalism, and neglect.

Thanks to CASA’s tenant education work in apartment complexes surrounding the mansion, and to its strong business partnerships, Sawyer Realty LLC, the current owners of the mansion, have decided to designate the building to be a center to serve the community.  In May 2005, Sawyer signed a lease with CASA for 99 years, for $1 per year.  On October 3, 2007, at CASA’s campaign kick-off, Sawyer announced the transfer of ownership of the building to CASA.  CASA plans to renovate the Mansion to create a 21,000 square-foot Multicultural Center that will house several non-profit organizations, and will provide educational, workforce development, leadership development, and services programming to the ethnically diverse but drastically underserved and economically disadvantaged immigrant and minority communities of Langley Park.  The Multicultural Center will be both a historic and green building.