Dozens of people filled the Women’s Resource and Action Center to walk through the halls of the blue house at the intersection of Market and Madison Streets for the last time.

WRAC hosted a goodbye party Thursday evening for the house across from the IMU. The house will soon be torn down to accommodate a larger parking garage on the block.

The blue house has been home to WRAC since 1976, but on Jan. 7, it will move up the hill to the Bowman House, at the intersection of Dubuque and Bloomington Streets across from Burge Hall.

“We feel really happy about where we’re going,” WRAC director Linda Kroon said. “We’re obviously going to miss the blue house, there are a lot of memories here and a lot of sentimental attachment here. It will be very strange for a while for all of us for this house to be gone, but the work will continue, and WRAC will not miss a beat.”

At the goodbye party, people were encouraged to write messages on the walls. As the evening went on, the wall became covered with “thank you” notes and declarations of love.

“I’m sad to see it go; it’s that random little blue house that doesn’t really fit,” said Sarah Zaffis, a former WRAC student volunteer. “It’s a happy place where everyone can get together; you may not know anyone in the room, but you have fun.”

Many people are excited about the move, despite having to say goodbye to the location that housed them for nearly 40 years.

“WRAC deserves to have a nice spot and a nice space,” Zaffis said. “It’s a long time coming; they deserve to have a new space; they’re getting new furniture and everything. It more legitimizes them as an organization.”

Kroon said the biggest downfall of the new building is that there’s no elevator. She said they pushed to have an elevator, something they lacked in the blue house, but it was too expensive.

“We’re going to do everything we can to make sure that all the programming and services we have are accessible to people,” Kroon said. “If we can’t accommodate that in our house, we’ll go elsewhere.”

Kroon said she is happy to be moving to another house rather than an institutional building. It is more appropriate for the kind of work WRAC does, she said.

“I could tell it was a very welcoming space from the minute I stepped in,” WRAC student volunteer Britt Griffin said. “I’m really excited to keep working with them and I’m really looking forward to their move.”

Kroon said WRAC will be dark for a week while they make the move, but they plan to be ready to go by the time the new semester begins. They plan to have a grand opening celebration sometime in February.