Bakersfield Life

Houchin's 'field of dreams' to become reality

larger view

     When I look across a field along Buena Vista Road, south of White Lane, I see carrots being harvested. Someday soon, this property will become the Seven Oaks Business Park and the new home of Houchin Community Blood Bank.     Through a generous five-acre donation in the business park, Bolthouse Properties LLC is enabling Houchin to meet the ever-increasing medical needs of people in metropolitan Bakersfield and Kern County.     Houchin will build a complex that will consolidate its laboratory, manufacturing, transportation, quality assurance and administration facilities. The complex also will include a full-service donor-drawing site. The existing drawing site on Truxtun Avenue will remain open.It is difficult to relate the importance of consolidating these activities, which now are housed at various locations.     Perhaps some perspective will help. Houchin, a nonprofit organization, is one of only 75 independent blood banks nationwide.     Founded to meet residents’ medical needs for blood and blood products, Houchin opened in 1951 with only 10 employees. The population of metropolitan Bakersfield in those days was less than 40,000.     Over the following six decades, metropolitan Bakersfield’s population has increased to more than 300,000, with the county’s population rapidly approaching 800,000. Houchin services the needs of all of Kern County and now employs close to 100 people. Medical procedures, such as cancer treatments, have advanced. Kern County has an increasing number of health care providers that specialize in these treatments. And with an expansion of all of the hospital facilities, Houchin must keep pace with the growing demands placed on it by these facilities.     All these advances increase the need for blood and blood components.     Only about 3 percent of the people eligible to donate blood in metropolitan Bakersfield and Kern County donate blood. This army of compassionate and generous donors must expand. Our lives and the lives of our families, friends and neighbors depend on more people donating blood, platelets, plasma and other blood components.     While recruiting more donors is critical, it is not the entire solution. Houchin must become more efficient. With various aspects of its collecting, manufacturing and transporting activities housed in separate locations, efficiency is challenged, as is Houchin’s ability to respond quickly to changing community needs.     Bolthouse Properties’ generous donation and the potential to create a consolidated complex for Houchin comes as the community, its residents and its health care providers are at the threshold of even greater expansions.     There are significant advantages for residents to be served by Houchin. Decisions made and programs operated are focused on this community’s needs, rather than on the needs of a larger organization based outside this community.     Residents have long recognized these advantages, giving generously of themselves through blood donations, as well as through financial contributions to Houchin’s operation.     Plans for Houchin’s consolidated complex are still being developed, as is the construction timeline. But construction of offsite improvements, such as sewer, storm drains, roads, sidewalks, etc., will begin this summer if not sooner.     We hope work will shift into high gear in 2011, Houchin’s 60th anniversary year. An estimated $10 million needs to be raised to cover construction costs.The work that looms ahead is great. While recruiting an increasing number of blood donors, Houchin will need to raise funds to build the much-needed complex. But the people of this community have proven time after time that they believe Houchin is a critically needed, life-saving resource. They have stepped forward to donate their blood. We are confident they will step forward to donate their money, as well, to help Houchin better serve metropolitan Bakersfield and Kern County.     Please go to hcbb.com for more information about the construction of Houchin’s consolidated complex, as well as ways to help.Greg Gallion is the president and chief executive officer of Houchin Community Blood Bank.