For about 35 years, the Trinity Jubilee Center operated out of a church’s cramped basement in Lewiston’s residential downtown, spilling its food pantry to the outdoors and running a free medical clinic in what has been described as “a closet.”

After moving into a brand new, larger building at 123 Bates St. in February, the community center’s leaders say they are fully up and running, and expanding the services they provide to people experiencing homelessness and poverty.

Executive Director Erin Reed said if you’d told her 10 years ago the nonprofit would have its own building four times the size of the church location they began renting in 1991, she never would have believed it.

Planning for the new facility began in 2020 after years of outgrowing its longtime home at Trinity Episcopal Church just up the road at 248 Bates St. The move has allowed the community center to expand its soup kitchen, day shelter, diaper bank, employment assistance and free health clinic.

“We kept growing but the space did not!” Reed said last week. “We didn’t have enough cold storage for our soup kitchen, our medical clinic was in a closet, our food pantry was held outdoors. We made it work because people needed help, but the new building lets us provide a lot more support.”

Volunteer Nancy Reynolds has been doing kitchen duty on Thursdays for about a year. She said she knew she needed to get involved when she heard Reed speak about Trinity and all the services it provides. 

“I decided I wanted to be a part of this great organization,” Reynolds said. “As a kitchen volunteer, I help put together wonderful meals for those in need, all cooked with creativity, skill and care using available ingredients.”

Reed said the nonprofit has already served over 10,000 meals, sheltered over 100 and helped 180 people apply for jobs since its move. 

It wasn’t an easy move, though, she said. 

With the lease on the church space up on Jan. 31, staff and volunteers began the race of moving locations on Jan. 26, which offered up one of the winter’s bigger snowstorms. Snow boots, four-wheel-drive and a whole lot of muscle and hustle was the name of the game that day, she said.

“So many people stepped up and helped,” Reed said. “A bank executive and a retired doctor came over and shoveled out our buried driveway, people with pickup trucks helped us move furniture, food and files, and people came in to stock shelves and assemble furniture.”

The community center only closed for three days, with business at the former location running as usual up until the minute the fridges, tables and computers were carried out the door, Reed said.

Expansion of the center in the new location means the opportunity to expand services, Reed said. The soup kitchen is cooking over 800 meals and the food pantry, now indoors, is feeding over 200 households per week. 

The day shelter now has two exam rooms, a laundry and a shower for guests, and private meeting rooms where people can get mental health and substance misuse services. The center also has more work space for those applying for jobs.

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The center is able to serve more elderly and people from outside of the downtown area because of the center’s proximity to the Blake Street Towers and Oak Park apartments, and to the bus station, Reed said.

“It was hard to do all of that with so little space,” Reed said. “Now we can really do more to help people not just survive today but also improve their situation long term. … We send out hundreds of meals for elderly people, people in recovery programs (and) children.”

The center is in need of donations to keep operations going smoothly and swiftly, including new to-go food containers and diaper sizes of all kinds, Reed said. To donate, go to Trinity Jubilee Center’s website: trinityjubileecenter.org/donate.

Or donations can be dropped off at the center 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday through Friday.