Volunteers dish out pizza, salad and pasta to guests at the Helping Hands Community Hub fundraiser at Mr. Mike’s Pizza on May 19. (Enterprise photo — Sydney Emerson)

The overwhelming voter support for the Lake Placid Central School District’s land donation on Monday was a heartwarming victory for this community.

With the school district’s donation of the more-than-one-acre property next to the Shipman Youth Center, a plan to construct a new combined food pantry and thrift store there is moving forward. This will be an amazing resource for residents and, hopefully, this land transfer will ensure that these vital community services will always have a place to operate.

Lake Placid needs this community hub, perhaps more now than ever. With housing prices and the cost of living rising, many residents need and deserve relief –though this won’t solve the problem, this hub will help. This could have a real impact on the quality of life in Lake Placid.

The vote on Monday was meaningful for a variety of reasons, but particularly impressive is the fact that 415 voters showed up to cast a ballot — for reference, 420 people cast votes in the last school budget vote. Not only that, but the measure was approved by 96%. As if more evidence were needed after May’s overwhelmingly successful fundraiser — where more than $10,000 was raised in a single evening — this vote showed that residents really do care about this project coming to fruition.

The key players behind this effort — the Ecumenical Charities program, elected officials in North Elba and Lake Placid, the Homestead Housing Corp., the Lake Placid school board and superintendent — deserve praise for putting this project together and moving it forward. Voters should feel proud that they’ve shown up for their community. We’re looking forward to the Helping Hands Community Hub’s anticipated fall opening.