Hall Food Pantry finds new home

SPRING VALLEY — An organization that serves the weakest and the neediest has found a home of its own.

After 30 months of making do in temporary facilities, the Hall Township Food Pantry will begin its move next week to a permanent location at 500 N. Terry St., in the former Hall Township building.

“It is wonderful to have a home again,” Director Candyce Wolsfeld said. “It has been a long 30 months.”

An early morning fire in September 2004 destroyed the pantry and the offices of Project Success of Eastern Bureau County, which operates the pantry, at the former American Legion building on West Cleveland Street.

The American Legion building was the first permanent home for the food pantry, which had previously rented space on West St. Paul Street. The pantry moved into the building when Hall Township bought it for a permanent home for Project Success, the food pantry and a community center.

Wolsfeld said it was thought, after the fire, that a new permanent home would be found in six months. Instead, due to the delay in building the new Hall Township Building, now located in Wolfer Industrial Park, it has taken 26 months to move and four more months to restore the former Hall Township Building to meet health department codes and turn a garage into a pantry.

Wolsfeld said renovating the building from an office and vehicle storage building for its new uses, which include storing food and emergency supplies as well as providing cooking demonstrations, has been expensive. The workers have had to renovate the garage, build walls, add water mixers, rebuild the ceiling, add heating vents, block off a door and paint the floor.

Those expenses have compounded financial problems for Project Success. Before the purchase of the American Legion building, the township had paid the food pantry’s rent, but after the fire, Project Success picked up the rent expenses.

“It has cost Project Success almost $30,000 to be located downtown for the last 30 months. That does not include the cost for continuing the more than 30 programs we deliver to the public free of charge," Wolsfeld said. “It has been a huge burden on us and has taken money we had for renovation to pay the rent, utilities, water, storage and more.”