There have been a few delays but the Gathering Place now has the drawings and is in the process of putting their project to tender.
The local soup kitchen, currently on Algonquin Avenue will be moving to a new location which is considered a more ideal location which will be better suited for the clientele.
“We always tell people we are open for 115 minutes, so when you have 117 people in 115 minutes, you are going to have people waiting in line and so we don’t have the space, we’ve only got 23 seats, so there’s people waiting in the vestibule, there’s people waiting in line,” stated Dennis Chippa, the Gathering Place Executive Director.
“It gets really congested and it’s inconsiderate frankly to have people wait in line that long. I mean there’s nothing we can do about it.”
Gathering Place officials say the new Cassells street location will give them more space to operate, along with an improvement in cooking facilities and a better storage area for food.
“With the bigger kitchen, a bigger vestibule, we can have more people in the building, staying warm as best we can so that’s important to us,” stated Chippa.
Chippa expects construction on the building to begin this coming spring which hopes of the new facility opening in late 2017 or early in 2018.
“What was so good was the community was so supportive to give us the financial resources for us to do the renovations,” Chippa stated about the community support.
“We just want to be open and transparent that we just want to get some kind of movement. Now that the paperwork is done and now that we have all the final plans approved, we can go to tender, get a contractor, get some work done and start knocking some holes in walls.”
