Asbury Park Mercy Center could double size of its food pantry with new headquarters

ASBURY PARK - The Mercy Center will demolish its existing three buildings on Main Street and replace them with one new facility complete with a bigger food pantry.

The City Council voted unanimously to adopt an amended Main Street Redevelopment plan at the July 17 meeting to allow the Mercy Center to revamp its building and expand its food services in the community.

The Mercy Center operates a food pantry on Main Street and the Sisters Academy of New Jersey on Springwood Avenue, as well as other "wrap-around services," that work to end generational poverty by educating young women in the Asbury Park area . Those services include a series of targeted, holistic assistance such as food, clothing, and money for utilities, as well as advocacy, counseling and behavior modification services for families.

The adopted ordinance amends the Main Street redevelopment plan to add a new permanent use, specifically soup kitchens and food pantries, so that the Mercy Center can redevelop its property to improve the existing facility.

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In 1986, the Sisters of Mercy , a Catholic order of nuns, purchased and renovated 1106 Main St. and incorporated under the name Mercy Center.

In 1991, Mercy Center purchased the adjacent property and after complete renovation, the building opened as the Family Resource Center, providing multilingual services such as English as a second language classes, parenting classes and family counseling.

In 2003, Mercy Center opened a third building that contained a pantry on the first floor and additional conference/meeting space on the second floor.

A 'food desert' in Asbury Park

"Asbury Park is considered a food desert," said Kim Guadagno, executive director of Mercy Center and the lieutenant governor under the Chris Christie administration. "I know that is hard to believe but what that really means is that 13% of the population of Asbury Park will go to bed tonight not knowing where their next meal is coming from. That is roughly 2,000 people."

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On July 17 alone, the Mercy Center served 143 families, she said.

"Over the last year we served 100,000 people. That is a 3,000% increase over two years ago and a 200% increase over last year," Guadagno said.

She called the Mercy Center's food pantry "a vital lifeline to the people in this community."

"We are the only pantry open five days a week in this part of the county, and we are the only pantry who is ensuring the people of Asbury Park get the food they need in order to survive," Guadagno said.

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She added "that is just one aspect of what we do." The Mercy Center has 15 licensed social workers and advocates who speak English, Spanish, Arabic and Creole.

"And they serve the community by giving them a chance to live full lives. If you don't have a full stomach, you're not going to have a full life. And then we end the cycle of poverty by what we do on Springwood Avenue, the fourth-to-eighth grade girls school called the Sisters Academy," Guadagno said.

She added "it is imperative that we upgrade our facilities here, we simply have run out of space."

Getting food without the stigma

In 1999, the city granted Mercy Center a variance to operate a pantry for dry goods and storage that served eight to nine families per day. The proposed expansion double the size of the current pantry to allow clients to shop more conveniently, in a stigma-free way, as if shopping at any grocery store.

"I drove there this morning and I pulled up to the building and I looked at the people in the line. There were little babies, different ethnic groups, and it broke my heart," said Veronica Gilbert-Tyson, director of the Family Resource Center who has worked at Mercy Center for 28 years. "The people, the poor, the underprivileged, we need to serve them with dignity, with respect, with compassion."

She added "people should not have to be lining up feeling embarrassed, ashamed, to be standing there for food."

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"More would come more readily because of the privacy (with the renovations) and we need to continue to operate in the traditions of the Sisters of Mercy and we can only do that if we enhance our building," Gilbert-Tyson said.

People using the pantry will select their own food, both dry goods and fresh produce, and bag their groceries as would any person at a grocery store. The food pantry will include storage rooms, refrigeration for fresh food and produce along with space for volunteers and staff.

Shoppers will enter through a reception area in the back of the building and exit through the front. In the event there are lines, there will be space in the back of the building for families to wait comfortably out of the weather. Like the current pantry, the new one will be open 8:30 a.m. to noon and 1:30 p.m. to 4 p.m. weekdays.

The Mercy Center hopes to occasionally provide special distributions after hours to better accommodate working families and holidays.

The reception area will have public bathrooms and allow shoppers to take advantage of our other services on the second floor, with access to a public elevator. The staff will have private access to the second and third floors with a second elevator.

The one-story café at the corner of Third and Main allows for future development of commercial space in a prime location at the corner of the property. At this time, Mercy does not have an agreement for the use of the space but they anticipate a café-type setting that is consistent with the nonprofit use of the rest of the property. It will at no time be operated as a soup kitchen.

The second floor is for office and conference space for the Family Resource Center, and will provide more spacious offices to the clients they currently serve. Outside of the office space, there will be a rooftop area, that substitutes for the small park-like setting which will become parking, to allow for outdoor services and programs for children and adult clients.

The smaller third floor will house the administrative offices and provide conference room space for board and other group gatherings. This means all of Mercy Center's services will be under one roof for the first time since its beginning in the 1980s.

Charles Daye is the metro reporter for Asbury Park and Neptune, with a focus on diversity, equity and inclusion. @CharlesDayeAPP Contact him: CDaye@gannettnj.com .

This article originally appeared on Asbury Park Press: Asbury Park Mercy Center could double size of its food pantry with new headquarters