The Trinity Jubilee Center on Bates Street is looking to move to 60 Park St. in Lewiston, which the city uses for parking. Daryn Slover/Sun Journal
LEWISTON — Plans for Trinity Jubilee Center’s new location are beginning to take shape.
On Monday, the Planning Board approved the center’s development review application to build a two-story, 11,000-square-foot resource center at 60 Park St. in the downtown.
The City Council and Planning Board approved the sale of part of a lot at 60 Park St., which officials refer to as the “Bates Street parcel,” to the Jubilee Center in December. The price was $30,000, plus the cost to survey and divide the property, which is being used for overflow parking for the Oak Street municipal garage.
The sale was also made on the condition that the resource center’s plans include restrooms that are open to the public during business hours. The entrance to the building will be on Bates Street next to a bus stop.
The Jubilee Center has been operating from the basement of Trinity Episcopal Church at 247 Bates St. since 1991. The secular nonprofit serves more than 1,000 people per week, offering daily lunches, a weekly food pantry and a day shelter. It also has a resource center for homeless individuals and refugee integration services.
The Park Street building will nearly triple the center’s capacity compared to the “woefully inadequate” size of the current Bates Street location, Adam Lemire, an architect with Auburn-based Platz Associates, told the Planning Board on Monday.
The new building will have two, 5,500-square-foot floors. The first floor will have offices, private spaces for clients to meet with caseworkers, a commercial kitchen to prepare free meals, food pantry, public restrooms, resource center and more — the same offerings the center has now but with room to move around.
The second floor will be used entirely for storage.
“And that’s just, again, this long-term capacity of being able to take in a winter jacket in the spring and be able to save it until the next (winter),” Lemire said.
The current space is “tight,” Executive Director Erin Reed said Tuesday.
“Our programs have just grown and grown, and it’s hard,” she said. “We feed people and we shelter people, and those two programs have to fight over space. Like do we store a pallet of food in this corner or do we set up a table and chair and bring in another person from the cold.”
There are boxes stacked up to the ceiling. The medical clinic is “literally in the closet.”
Reed said the center wants to “give our clients dignity and respect.”
“Some people have a hard time asking for help, and it’s even harder when it’s crowded, and our staff members are always getting interrupted and there’s strangers listening in on conversations,” she said.
Reed said she doesn’t want people walking away thinking the experience was unhelpful.
While the center was able to pay for the parcel with savings, “we’re building from the land up,” Reed said, and will be launching a fundraising campaign. Platz Associates has estimated the construction costs will be about $2.25 million, though that may change given labor shortages and supply chain issues, she said.
Reed said they’re hoping to break ground in the fall and be up and running by fall of 2024.
While this will be a “tough transition,” Reed said Jubilee Center “would not be here today without the generosity” of Trinity Episcopal Church.
“It’s a testament to their kindness and their hard work all those years ago that we’ve now grown so big that we’ve outgrown their space,” she said.
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