After five and a half years of calling 10-12 Abbey Walk, Grimsby home, Alexis Powell-Howard and the team at Fortis Therapy and Training has moved into a new home.
Any savvy Grimbarian’s out there will have noticed some serious renovation work taking place at Gordon House on Dudley Street. An iconic and memorable building for so many living, working, and visiting the area, the building is now open, operating as the new home of Fortis.
A building with so much local history, a factor that the multi-award-winning mental health and emotional wellbeing service wants to celebrate, Gordon House has been renovated by the Fortis team, local contractor RPS Ltd and other local trades.
As well as breathing life into and restoring a fading Grimsby building, this move sees Fortis expand once again, with additional therapy rooms, parking, and brand new facilities coming together at Gordon House to further enhance the experience of each client and business that visits.
Named after Gordon of Khartoum, according to Grimsby Local History Library, the Victorian villa that Fortis will soon be calling home was built shortly after the General’s death in 1885, by George Doughty. It was later bought by Henry James Curry, the manager of the Princes of Wales Theatre of Freeman Street. Since then, only a handful of owners have resided at Gordon House, the last few being dental practices.
A building many of Fortis’ own team visited for dental check-ups over the years, Alexis has long seen the potential in this building. A huge project that has not come without its challenges, transforming the former dentist surgery into a premises which reflects the award-winning work Fortis does has been no mean feat. So much of the renovation work has, ironically, mirrored how the team approaches mental health support - by building solid foundations. Wobbly walls and crumbling brickwork have all been rebuilt to bring this project to life.
Alexis Powell-Howard, managing director of Fortis Therapy and Training and twice TEDx speaker, said: “We’ve been impatiently and excitedly waiting to say this, we've moved! The half a decade or so we have spent at Abbey Walk has given us, as a team, a space to lay the foundations of Fortis, and to expand on those. But now it is time for a new chapter and the next period of growth for us.
“Working closely with local contractors RPS Ltd and Scott Rawlins Ltd, we’ve been able to restore Gordon House to its former glory and introduce so many new aspects into the Fortis experience, as well as more of our personality as a team and a business. We have loved welcoming clients through the doors of our new home.
“We will also be hosting an official launch event in the coming weeks, where we will reveal our new room names, as chosen by the people within our community – both our literal community here in Lincolnshire and our virtual one across our thriving social media channels. Following a competition and Live public vote, we have ten new room names, each one dedicated to a person or personality that has inspired. We can’t wait to reveal them all, and the stories behind them over the coming weeks.”
