Lewiston’s Trinity Jubilee Center, which has been offering food, warmth and support to those in need for 35 years from the basement of a downtown church, is moving to a new and larger building this week that will allow it to help even more people with more services.

Officials aim to open the new center next week at 123 Bates St. across from Lewiston’s Central Fire Station. It had outgrown its space in the basement of Trinity Episcopal Church several blocks away at 247 Bates St.

Executive Director Erin Reed said the recent snowstorm was not going to deter efforts to open the new center next week.

“We did the groundbreaking last winter in the snow,” she wrote in an email late last week. “Now mother nature is giving us a blizzard on our moving day. We’ll get it done; we have four wheel drive and a good team!”

The Jubilee Center opened in 1991 at the church. The new building will have four times as much room, Reed said.

“We started out with a soup kitchen, food pantry, and shelter and we still do those programs, but we want to do more to help people really get back on their feet,” she said. “We already help about 600 people a year with finding jobs and we can help even more people with more space.”

She continued, “Our plan is to open the first week of February. Once our programs are up and running and the dust has settled, we’ll plan a grand opening event and invite people in for tours.”

The center will be closed Thursday and Friday this week, and Monday, Feb. 2, to finish the move. It will open at the new space the first week in February.

The new center will have rooms to offer mental health and substance misuse services. It will have two exam rooms to offer medical care for people without insurance, Reed said.

As it did in its original location, the new center will offer a day shelter for unhoused men, women and children. It will provide a place for them to come indoors to warm up, use the bathroom, fill water bottles, charge their phones, and rest.

The center’s soup kitchen staff will continue to prepare lunches Monday through Friday, serving 100-200 meals each day to men, women, and children who are hungry, Reed said.  

In 2024 over 37,000 meals were served.

The center will also offer a food pantry, immigrant integration program, and a resource center to help write resumes and find jobs, among other services.

About $5 million was raised to fund the new center, with about $25,000 more needed for the project, Reed said.

The organization was helped by a $2 million U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development grant advocated for by U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, for construction of the building and $950,000 from the Androscoggin County Commission from federal American Rescue Plan Act funds. The rest came from local groups, including Androscoggin Bank, DuBois Realty, Maine Family Federal Credit Union, Friends at the United Methodist Church of Auburn and families and individuals, Reed said.

Local companies that were moving or getting new furniture donated old furniture to the center, she said.