Lancaster County Food Hub is looking forward to welcoming clients next spring to large new welcome and outreach center.
Located on the second floor of the Food Hub’s headquarters at 812 N. Queen St., it will integrate a range of services offered by Food Hub outreach workers and various partner organizations.
Plans to renovate the space, which totals roughly 5,500 square feet, have been in the works for several years. Creating such a center “had always been part of what we were working toward,” Executive Director Paige McFarling said.
The Food Hub prides itself on its relational approach, and on its commitment to being low-barrier: Clients are engaged “where they are,” without preconditions.
“This expansion will give us additional space to be responsive to the needs of the community and grant people the dignity of seeking assistance in one place to fill their basic human needs,” McFarling wrote in an update this past summer.
The core will be a flexible open-plan day center fitted out with tables and chairs. It will be accessed through a new handicap-accessible elevator or via stairs. Along the west side will be some offices for private meetings and a “quiet room.”
On the east side, folding dividers will enclose a storage area. To the south, double doors will open onto an open-air rooftop respite area.
It’s all designed to be as flexible as possible, McFarling said. There’s an area where a couple of daytime beds can be set up for individuals who work night jobs. If at some point it makes sense to provide overnight shelter beds, that can be done. If and when the storage area is no longer needed, it can be integrated into the outreach area.
The Food Hub employs four outreach workers: Three fulltime, one part-time. The Food Hub anticipates adding staff when the center opens, but the details are still being worked through, McFarling said.
Joining them to offer services at the center will be staff from the many other organizations with which the Food Hob collaborates. They include Penn Medicine Lancaster General Health street medicine team, the Lancaster EMS community paramedic team (the Refresh Lancaster mobile hygiene trailer makes regular stops at the Food Hub), Blueprints for Addiction Recovery and others.
Previous design iterations included a low-barrier overnight shelter with around 30 beds. However, that component was taken out, McFarling said, in light of the upcoming opening of an 80-bed shelter at Otterbein United Methodist Church.
The church and Food Hub are within a stone’s throw of each other, on opposite sides of the intersection of North Queen and Clay streets, and the Food Hub is conferring with the Otterbein shelter operator, YMCA of the Roses, to collaborate and provide support.
The Food Hub’s project is budgeted at $1.2 million. The nonprofit has received a $500,000 grant from Pennsylvania’s Local Share Account program; it is raising the rest through a capital campaign. It’s about 30% away from its goal, and is deeply grateful to all who have pledged to date, McFarling said.
The center should be finished and ready to welcome guests in late March or early April, she said.
Deb Jones is the director of the Office of the Lancaster County Homelessness Coalition, which is charged with coordinating the county’s homelessness response.
“We are delighted that the Food Hub is maximizing their space to be able to meet the needs around housing and homelessness,” she said.
The coalition is planning its own homelessness services hub on South Prince Street. McFarling and Jones both said they see the two hubs as complementary.
Besides a day center where clients can work with service providers, the South Prince Street Hub is to include crisis housing and transitional housing. Its plans and budget are still being finalized.
The Lancaster County Redevelopment Authority, which is overseeing the project, previously had hoped to have it open by the end of 2025, but that now has been pushed back to early 2026, Executive Director Justin Eby said.
