Construction Update #1
In October 2019, we launched a capital campaign to finance a huge new initiative. After months of planning and so much generous community support, we’re proud to announce we began renovations on March 9th! As long as we keep on track , our new Food Club & Opportunity Hub will be completed in September, and open in October this year. We launched this community campaign because we found a better way to create expanded healthy food access, emphasizing efficiency, dignity, and choice. But in the last year, we’ve also seen firsthand how food security has become even more challenging for our community. We’re so pleased to be moving full speed ahead to open this new and critical resource, perfectly designed for our community’s needs as we rebuild in partnership with so many of our neighbors.
The Food Club & Opportunity Hub is a 16,000 square foot building, requiring extensive renovation and remodeling. In the first month, our construction partners began demolition, quickly eliminating walls, removing the external awning, emptying the building, and cutting an access ramp down to the basement. Take a look at the attached photos to glimpse some of the transformation.
It’s a huge and exciting step to see these changes take place, thanks to the support of so many generous people who have already invested in the future of how we’re able to serve the community.
Throughout the pandemic, we used this building as a working warehouse for our food storage and bulk sorting and packing efforts, which were instrumental in our ability to expand our efforts threefold in response to the need in 2021. Now we’ve moved those food packing operations to temporary space (generously donated by Fellowship Church) in order to transform this space into our vision for enhanced service. From our beginnings as a community-founded, community-funded effort to serve marginalized families, and over many waves of transition to meet the most pressing needs of our neighbors, Community Action House has existed to transform ideas into action that makes a material difference in our community. This initiative is the next big step in our evolving services.
This month, the interior rebuilding begins, with new walls going up, and the exterior site work begins in earnest, as the parking lot is excavated for the newly planned layout. When you drive past 739 Paw Paw, you are likely to see trucks, equipment, and construction teams hard at work to make this vision a reality. Here’s a quick summary of our planned timelines:
March 9 - Demolition and construction begins!
April/May - Furniture and fixtures plans are finalized and ordered; internal construction and parking lot renovations begin
May/Jun - Public campaign launches to spread the word on Food Club, with a big effort to reach our full campaign goal of $4.25M!
Aug/Sept - Volunteer and member recruitment promotion and events
Sept - Construction completed; community day(s) tbd
October - Open for service
We’re proud to be working with so many of you to provide this incredible new resource so well aligned with our community’s present needs. Stay tuned for more updates to come, and help spread the word! It takes a movement that we’re building together.
On October 25th, we celebrated with our community as we launched Food Club. After years of planning, and a community-wide campaign joined by hundreds of individuals, businesses, foundations, and churches, this new cornerstone of community service welcomed its first guests.