Staff, volunteers and supporters of social services nonprofit Family of Woodstock took a victory lap this week, showing off an elegant new headquarters that will for the first time allow the agency to bring all of its disparate array of services under one roof while significantly cutting operating expenses.

Family of Woodstock started from humble beginnings in 1970 as a kind of hippie crisis-response team to deal with the wave of vulnerable and frequently drug-addled kids who began showing up in town in the wake of the Woodstock festival. In the 52 years since, it has evolved into a comprehensive social services agency in Ulster County with a broad spectrum of 22 programs in line with its motto, “Helping with any problem under the sun.”

Family’s portfolio includes everything from domestic violence services aimed at both victims and abusers to group homes to help youth transition out of foster care to a crisis-response hotline manned by volunteers around the clock. Until this week, those services were split between its cramped headquarters at 35 John St. and another building at 166 Washington Ave.

Family founder and Executive Director Michael Berg said bringing the entire operation under one roof would allow for better communication and better creative synergy between the many branches of the group’s services.

“Being spread out like that was difficult,” Berg said, sitting in a spacious, sun-drenched room on the ground floor of the agency’s new HQ at 31 Albany Ave. “It’s not ‘Can you come downstairs and bring that receipt,’ it’s ‘I’ll get it to you next week.'”

Family’s new home is not just any office space. It’s an 11,000-square-foot, three-story 19th-century brick edifice built in the style of an Italian villa by the locally prominent Forsyth family in 1851. The building was carefully restored in the early 2000s with hardwood floors, gleaming mahogany banisters and elegant plasterwork. Its $1.8 million acquisition by family was funded with part of a large bequest by New Paltz insurance man the late George Devine.

The stately surroundings — which will provide on-site services for the 1,000 clients of its adult case management program alone — is in line, Berg said, with the agency's ethos of delivering services with dignity and a judgment-free attitude.

“It shows respect,” said Berg of the upscale ambiance. “It shows that we value [clients] as people, regardless of their circumstances.”

More pragmatically, by freeing the agency from lease obligations on two buildings as well as a more energy efficient building (the site is equipped with a solar array) Family’s expecting to cut operating expenses by $60,000 per year. Berg said the emphasis on saving is part of a broader strategy by Family to retrench while still flush from a two-year infusion of pandemic-related government aid.

“We know that when the Covid money is gone, government is going to contract,” said Berg. “In light of that, the board thought the best thing we could do would be to lower our operating costs.”