Manna plans growth at Main Street building

BANGOR – Formerly a poor farm for the city’s destitute, the Beal College building on Main Street once again will house Bangor’s needy when its doors open July 1 as the new home of Manna Inc., a local food pantry and day care center.

Manna’s purchase of the property became final Friday as workers lugged out the last of the college’s furniture and office equipment to truck down Farm Road to the former Saucony building, where Beal College will reopen on Monday.

“For us at Manna, this is 13 years of hard work,” Bill Rae, Manna’s executive director, said Friday. “It’s amazing that we have come full circle.”

With substantially more room to grow, Beal and Manna each have plans to extend the services they offer.

With Beal College’s space more than doubling to 72,000 square feet, the career-training school will offer new programs, a larger student lounge and bookstore, and expanded computer labs, according to General Manager Robert DeColfmacker. Beal, with an enrollment of about 350 students, offers programs in allied health, criminal justice, computers, office management and conservation law enforcement.

The shoe plant, which closed in 2001, will be open to students on Monday after Beal officially takes possession of the building today.

“It’s a nicer learning environment, more comfortable, and really gives us the opportunity to expand,” DeColfmacker said Friday.

Acquired by Beal in November 2003, the Saucony building was purchased for $785,000 and will be completely renovated over a five-year period, he said.

Manna workers and volunteers will begin knocking down walls on Monday, renovating the 164-year-old structure on Main Street to house a health clinic and adult care facility along with the soup kitchen, food pantry and day care it has operated since 1991, Rae said. With more than 100 people coming to Manna’s Center Street location every night in search of a hot meal, the old location is just too small, he said.

“We’re totally overcrowded,” Rae said. “For 13 years we’ve wanted to do this, but never had the building site to do this.”

Two of Manna’s three buildings on Center Street already have been sold, Rae said.

With an additional 30,000 square feet with which to work, Rae said he plans to add a 12- to 15-bed adult substance abuse program to provide holistic treatment to users who are being turned away from other crowded facilities.

“Over 400 adults right now [are] in need of treatment” in Penobscot County, Rae said.

Dubbed “The Derek House,” after the Hebrew word for a new journey, road or direction, the program also will offer counseling and job training, the executive director said.

Penobscot Community Health Care of Bangor will staff a free health clinic for the uninsured at the new building, and bus passes will be provided to those who cannot afford transportation, Rae said.

With nearly 80 percent of the $685,000 needed to buy, renovate and outfit the building already collected, organizers will turn to the public in coming weeks for additional donations, according to Ray Robinson, chief operating officer of Bangor Hydro and a member of Manna’s board of directors. The building alone cost $325,000, Rae said.

The executive director said the new location will be more convenient and he expected Manna to continue serving those people who now go to the Center Street location.

“I think we’re going to see new people coming in,” he added.