“I am very excited,” said the nonprofit’s executive director, Sue Andrews. “This has been part of our strategic plan for about four years, to acquire new space.”
The programs will soon share newly renovated quarters in a former market building at 121 Depot St.
The timing of the purchase is also fortuitous, she said, as the group’s programs “are very stressed for space” at the First Baptist Church complex on Main Street. “It is a challenge to be setting things up and taking them down” to allow for church use of its meeting space, she said.
That’s true because of the loss of a former corner store building on Gage Street that housed the organization’s Kitchen Cupboard food pantry and related services. The store building went into foreclosure in the fall, forcing a move to a building near the church, where the free clinic has been located since 2009.
“That was the straw that broke the camel’s back,” said clinic medical director Dr. Richard Dundas.
He said the organization “had no place to go without that building, and we had to go to the Baptist Church.”
Dundas said the move to the Depot Street building will consolidate the clinic, the food pantry, the Food and Fuel Fund, a free dental care program and the nonprofit’s office staff in one location for the first time.
According to town records, the one-story brick building was purchased this month from Applejack Historic Real Estate LLC for $220,000. The nonprofit, which is seeking a change of use permit from the Development Review Board, proposes in its application $100,707 worth of renovation and cleaning work in the boarded-up structure, which has been vacant for a few years.
A real estate listing for the property stated it was 3,640 square feet on a lot with room for 20 parking spaces.
The plan calls for moving the food distribution program to the site first, followed by the primary care free clinic, Dundas said. The transfer is expected to begin in late May or early June, he said.
The medical clinic, he said, will continue to operate on some Monday mornings and every Thursday evening. It provides primary medical care; behavioral health screenings, interventions and referrals; physical exams; wellness education; women’s health clinics; care management; referral to participating specialists when medically necessary; assistance obtaining pharmaceuticals; and assistance by certified “navigators” with insurance programs.
The Kitchen Cupboard program provides food, including local produce, to about 1 in 4 families in Bennington, Andrews said, along with nutrition and cooking education. The plan calls for refurbishing a kitchen in the building for those activities.
More than consolidation of the programs, “space is the big thing for us,” Andrews said. “This will allow more flexibility for all the people to work.”
The renovation work also will “bring that building back to life,” she said.
The organization began in 1973 as the Bennington Interfaith Food and Fuel Fund in response to the first Mideast oil embargo. Management was then provided by clergy from the faith communities that make up the Greater Bennington Interfaith Council.
In 2001, the organization incorporated and obtained IRS status as a nonprofit. The clinic was established in 2009, and the board of directors was expanded to include nonclergy members. In 2012, the Kitchen Cupboard program was established.
The programs are supported by the member congregations of the council, a longtime group of faith communities from a variety of traditions that work together on social justice issues.
The Kitchen Cupboard is a network partner of the Vermont Foodbank, while the clinic is affiliated with the Vermont Coalition of Clinics for the Uninsured and Volunteers in Medicine, a national association of free clinics.