As president and founder of Rosie the Riveter Trust, the non-profit partner of Rosie the Riveter WWII Home Front National Historical Park, Tom Butt, FAIA, LEED AP,  took on what turned out to be a seven-year long pro-bono project of rehabilitating the Maritime Child Care Center in 2004.
The Maritime Center is part of Rosie the Riveter WWII Home Front National Historical Park and one of two surviving Richmond Child Care Centers specially designed and built to serve women working in the WWII Richmond Shipyards. It also represented a collaboration between industrialist Henry J. Kaiser and progressive educator Dr. Catherine Landreth. Built in haste without a concrete foundation, the Maritime Center had continued to serve as a pre-school and child care center continuously from 1943 until 2004 when it was replaced by a new facility. It was endangered and rapidly deteriorating when Tom Butt, using his skill and experience in historic preservation, architecture, construction, grant writing and politics, began a successful seven-year project to rehabilitate the facility..
Tom first prepared a grant application in 2004 and on the second try secured a $2 million matching grant from Proposition 40 Funds in 2008 administered by the California Cultural and Historical Endowment (CCHE). It took another year to secure the $2 million matching funds, consisting of $500,000 from the City of Richmond and $1,500,00 from the West Contra Costa Unified School District (WCCUSD). But that still wasn’t enough, Tom worked with Equity Community Builders, Northern California Community Loan Fund (NCCLF) and Chase Bank to secure an additional $3 million in Historic Preservation and New Markets Tax Credits. The National Park Service kicked in $163,000, and later, WCCUSD added another $500,000.
In 2010, Tom arranged transfer of property ownership from Contra Costa County to Rosie the Riveter Trust and opened bids for the rehabilitation work. Construction started in March of 2010, and Tom continued to act as pro-bono project manager for Rosie the Riveter Trust, overseeing both the architect, Hamilton + Aitken and the contractor, Alten Construction. The Maritime Center was completed in August of 2011 at a total cost of over $7 million, not including the approximately $500,000 of pro-bono services provided over seven years by Tom Butt and Interactive Resources. It is occupied by pre-school and kindergarten classes of the Richmond College Prep Charter School, offices of Richmond Community Foundation and by a National Park Service interpretive center. 
The property enjoys a status equivalent to a national historic landmark, and the rehabilitated structure is certified LEED Silver. As a certified rehabilitation for tax credit purposes, the completed project conforms to the secretary of the Interior’s Standards for Rehabilitation. It is only the second public school in the United States that is also part of a national park, the first being Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas.