Heastie: $250K for Lake Placid food pantry, thrift hub

New York state Assembly’s Speaker Carl Heastie, left, answers press questions while Assemblyman Billy Jones looks on at the Olympic Center in Lake Placid on Thursday. (Enterprise photo — Sydney Emerson)
LAKE PLACID — New York state Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie and Assemblyman Billy Jones on Thursday announced a $250,000 state grant to Lake Placid’s combined food pantry and thrift shop, putting the project $150,000 over its initial $800,000 fundraising goal.
“It’s your money — it’s taxpayer money — and it should go for taxpayer purposes. I can’t think of anything more community-minded, community-based than a food pantry,” Heastie said. “That’s a good thing, when you’re able to come to communities and see a need and take care of it.”
The $250,000 will come out of the state budget’s discretionary funds, Heastie said.
“Sometimes when we allocate pots of money, it’s for these purposes. After the budget passes, needs arise that you don’t want to wait until next April, to tell people who need the services like the food pantry, ‘Oh, you’ve got to wait until next April when we put it in the budget.’ (Discretionary funds are) for purposes like this,” he said.
The as-yet-unnamed food pantry project — unofficially referred to as the Helping Hands Community Hub — is a planned 3,000 square foot building that will house both the Lake Placid Ecumenical Food Pantry, currently located in the basement of St. Agnes Church, and the Helping Hands Thrift Shop, which operated for 31 years on George and Bliss Lane before closing last November. The building is set to go up at the former site of Lake Placid Central School District’s basketball courts, next to the Shipman Youth Center, and was approved for construction by the Lake Placid-North Elba Joint Review Board on June 5 following a public hearing. On Monday, LPCSD voters overwhelmingly voted in favor of the school district donating the land on which the food pantry will be built to the town of North Elba. The town will own the food pantry building.
The food pantry building is expected to arrive in late July, slightly later than the initial project timeline of late June. The hub is eyeing a fall opening. As of last week, the project has $700,000 committed, including $10,686 raised at a May community fundraiser at Mr. Mike’s Pizza. The state grant now puts the project’s financial commitments closer to $950,000.
The food pantry has been in operation since 1985 under the Ecumenical Charities program, which also ran the thrift shop until its closure. The new combined services will be operated by many of the same people under a new 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, including Jim Koenig and Linda Young.
Koenig, pastor at Lake Placid Baptist Church and the president of the new non-profit board, said that the extra funds will allow the project to have a few extra amenities that weren’t originally in the budget.
“We’re pretty blown away,” Koenig said after Heastie’s announcement. “It puts us over our fundraising goal, but our fundraising goal did not include furnishings. This will probably put us in a spot where we can do some of the build-out of the basement.”
Construction is set to begin the first week in August. Lake Placid-based housing nonprofit Homestead Development Corporation is overseeing the project, working with Simplex Homes, a modular construction company based in Pennsylvania, to design and fabricate the building. Homestead previously worked with Simplex to build Fawn Valley, a 22-unit housing development for essential workers that recently went on the market.
Board members had hoped to put a meeting room in the basement for community classes and meetings, but the initial fundraising goal didn’t support finishing the basement. The new building’s design also includes space for loading and unloading furniture, expanding the thrift shop’s offerings to home goods.
“The whole idea of upcycling and recycling, we’re excited to be able to offer that along with a more robust thrift shop,” Koenig said. “The food pantry will be, just, such a nice facility. (It will) no longer have handicap accessibility issues and, I mean, we’re so thankful to the Catholic Church and their basement, but it’s going to be a neat change.”
Located in the basement of St. Agnes Church, the current food pantry is not ADA-compliant and often strains under cramped quarters. The new building is designed to streamline volunteers’ work and clients’ experiences when visiting the pantry, with a dedicated waiting room, spacious pantry, separate cardboard room and an ADA-compliant ramp out front.
Young manages the food pantry and, before it closed, the thrift shop. Under her guidance, food pantry volunteers provided approximately 28,755 meals in 2023, serving an average of 50 to 70 households every Friday.
“We’re here to serve. That’s the most important thing,” Young said on Thursday. “People know what we do, know what the cause is, and the mission and the purpose, and I think that’s so important.”
The project has been developed and supported by a wide range of community boards and organizations, including Homestead Development, the Lake Placid Central School District, the North Elba Town Council, the Lake Placid Village Board of Trustees and the Adirondack Foundation.
Young told the Enterprise in February that a food pantry’s community service goes far beyond providing meals.
“The food, you need to give out. You need to give out the clothes and the shoes. But, you need to give out the support. That’s where it all comes in,” she said. “(It’s about) fulfilling something that needs to be done and having a good feeling of knowing that you’re touching someone else’s life.”