LEWISTON — Fluffy snow flakes fell on people gathered Thursday afternoon to celebrate Trinity Jubilee Center’s groundbreaking ceremony for its new $5.1 million building at 123 Bates St. 

The 10,000-square-foot building will allow the organization to admit more people into its day shelter, store more food for its food program and give more space to caseworkers and medical professionals to help and treat clients, according to Volunteer Coordinator Jessica McKenzie. It will also give the organization room to grow its programs. 

“I mean, we’ve been waiting for this … since I’ve been here and we thought we were going to break ground last September so we’re just excited it’s finally happening,” McKenzie said. 

She was at Jubilee Center’s location in the Trinity Episcopal Church basement at 247 Bates St. on Tuesday morning handing out warm lunches and bags of food to clients.

Volunteer Calah Derocher hands out to-go meals Tuesday during the daily Meals Program at the Trinity Jubilee Center at 247 Bates St. in Lewiston. Ground was broken Thursday for a new $5.1 million building at 123 Bates St. to provide more space. Daryn Slover/Sun Journal

With dry and canned foods stacked high, volunteers cooking in the cramped kitchen, clients sitting on couches to get warm and staff working at desks stacked with papers in a space just large enough for the desks, every inch of the basement is used.

The Jubilee Center gets donations from Good Shepard Food Bank in Auburn, Bates College in Lewiston and The Green Ladle culinary program at Lewiston Regional Technical Center but sometimes has to turn away food because there is not enough room to store it, McKenzie said.

On Tuesday, volunteers were serving shepherd’s pie and pasta meals to clients. There are usually more than 100 meals per day served and volunteers always find more food if they run out of prepared food so nobody walks away empty handed, she said.

“If say hypothetically we were to run out, (volunteers) will say ‘wait’ and will go and scrounge and make sure somebody leaves with something,” she said.

Snow falls Thursday as Lewiston Mayor Carl Sheline speaks during the groundbreaking for the new Trinity Jubilee Center at 123 Bates St. in Lewiston. Daryn Slover/Sun Journal

With only six paid staff, Jubilee Center relies heavily on volunteers.

There was so much dry food stacked up in the day shelter section of the basement that couches had to be moved, further limiting the number of guests who could be admitted, McKenzie said.

Clothing storage is limited to one small room not much bigger than a walk-in closet. Often clients will come in without clothing items, such as shoes, in the winter, so staff try to keep a stock of certain items on hand but the small space limits how much can be stored, McKenzie said.

There is only one small space where clients can meet with caseworkers and medical providers, she said. Only one caseworker or provider can meet with one client at a time, limiting the number of services that can be administered.

At the new building, there will be multiple meeting spaces and a designated clinic.

“We’re going to have actual spaces for different companies to come in,” she said. “… Now that we’re going to have a space for it, I’m thinking that people are going to be housed a lot quicker.”

Joel Nason leaves the Trinity Jubilee Center at 247 Bates St. in Lewiston on Tuesday with a warm meal. Meals are served from Trinity’s soup kitchen to those in need Monday through Saturday. Daryn Slover/Sun Journal

Center clients navigated sidewalks and walkways around the church Tuesday dotted with crusty frozen water, many of them were homeless or in a vulnerable housing situation.

Client Joel Nason is staying at Hope Haven Gospel Mission’s shelter at 209 Lincoln St. at night and comes to the center for a warm meal and food to go, he said. It is the first time in his life he has not had a home and he cannot get an appointment with someone to help him apply for housing until January, he said.

“So in the meantime, we’re just stuck wandering around, hibernating in the library,” he said.

He welcomes the new Jubilee Center, knowing how much it will mean to people who need services, and he hopes more people will be helped as a result, he said.

Sick and walking the streets, he has no phone to set up medical appointments, he said. Though some in the unhoused community have become accustomed to living on the streets, he does not have those skills. “I don’t have the faculties to deal with this,” he said.

People often link homelessness with stigmas, like drug addiction, but even in those situations that should not mean a person should not be helped or that they deserve to live without a home, he said.

“You see commercials for animals that are out in the cold and people’s hearts go out to them – they’re animals, these are human beings and they’re stuck living on the street,” he said.

Jubilee Center client April Stanley gets food from the organization everyday, she said. She has been homeless since February and it is helpful to have a place to come to for food and to get out of the cold for a while during the day.

She is looking forward to better facilities at the new building, such as showers, washers and dryers, she said, though she hopes to have a home by then.

With construction expected to be completed by the end of next year, the new building marks a new chapter in the organization’s 33 years in operation providing services through its soup kitchen, food resource project, food pantry and diaper bank, day shelter, resource center and free medical clinic and immigration integration programs, according to Jubilee Center Executive Director Erin Reed.

The organization’s mission is to serve some of the city’s most vulnerable people, according to Reed. With nearly $3 million in state and federal contributions, a good chunk of the $5.1 million came from corporate and individual donations.

Snow falls Thursday while Trinity Jubilee Center Executive Director Erin Reed speaks at the groundbreaking ceremony for a $5.1 million building at 123 Bates St. in Lewiston. Daryn Slover/Sun Journal

“It’s amazing how quickly $10 and $20 donations can add up,” she said. “We currently rent the basement of Trinity Episcopal Church and when the new building is complete we will give up our lease and move all of our programs to our new forever home.”

Being situated downtown allows the organization to serve its elderly and disabled clients – many of whom live downtown and must walk to the center, she said. Having a new building next to the bus station will allow it to serve clients from the outskirts.

The space will allow the organization to nearly double the roughly 32 people it is allowed to serve in the church basement in the day shelter program – often reaching capacity in the winter and forcing it to turn some people away, she said. “We won’t need to do that anymore in the new building,” she said.

The new building will also expand the capacity of its resumé and job search program, reducing a current two-week wait list for those services, she said.

Its food program will have much more space in the new building, with a bigger kitchen that features walk-in coolers and freezers, and spaces to better store its dry food – expanding its food storage space, she said. This will allow staff and volunteers to feed more people.

Centers that provide the kind of services that the Jubilee does are critical to people who are homeless and have limited access to necessities such as food, Nason said.

“The fact that places like this exist is a godsend for people that are on the street, otherwise people would just starve to death,” he said. “These people help out and they’re good people.”

To donate visit Jubilee Center’s website at trinityjubileecenter.org/donate/