Old house razed to make way for Mission Kitchen
Facility planned by Hilltop Neighborhood House to provide hot meals for those in need
Building something new often requires getting rid of something old first.
Wednesday, contractors tore down an old house turned into apartments at 608 Union St. in Valparaiso to make way for the Mission Kitchen, a soup kitchen being constructed next year in a project undertaken by Hilltop Neighborhood House to provide hot meals to individuals and families in need.
Officials from Hilltop, and later, children in its preschool program, gathered in the chill and the mist to watch an excavator dig in and demo a garage behind the old blue house and then the house itself.
“It’s a community builder. It’s not something where people feel they can’t come out because they’re ashamed,” said Michelle Michaels, Hilltop’s director of development. Michaels said the capital campaign for the mostly donor-driven project is “A Seat at Our Table.”
“This is going to be that,” added Stayce Christ, Hilltop’s assistant director.
Hilltop opened a new food pantry at 606 Union St., just west of the site for Mission Kitchen, in November 2018 after its previous food pantry was flooded out earlier that year. Once the food pantry opened, said Deb Porter, president and longtime board member of the nonprofit, the board thought a soup kitchen would be an important aspect of the agency’s services.
When the former owner of the house, which had three apartments, decided to sell, he turned to Hilltop first.
“We were like, ‘Yeah, we want it,’” Porter said.
The residents who lived there found other housing in Valparaiso, according to Michaels.
The growth of the food pantry since it first opened in a closet at Hilltop in the 1990s illustrates the need to expand offerings to include hot meals, Hilltop officials said.
“We’ve seen nothing but complete growth since we were here,” said Jennifer Wright, Hilltop’s president and CEO, noting the pantry serves 800 families and
individuals a month and recently added 43 families in one week, well over the average of six new families it typically sees.
Services have expanded to meet that need, including a mobile pantry that goes out into the community to serve folks who lack transportation to get to the pantry.
The need is most felt in Hilltop’s immediate neighborhood. Within 1.2 square miles of its location, Wright said, 33% of residents live in poverty, double the average for Porter County as a whole.
Additionally, nonprofit organizations Housing Opportunities and Project Neighbors have been building transitional housing, which now makes up 75% of the housing within a three-block area.
Cameras outside the food pantry often capture people stopping by after hours to pick up donated clothing left on the front porch or grab canned goods from a little food pantry out front.
“It makes sense to have hot meals ready to go,” Wright said.
Residents who utilize the pantry, said Porter, prefer canned goods with pop-open lids because their living accommodations have a hot plate and a small refrigerator.
“When they’re preparing their food, they’re heating stuff up,” she said. “So think about a hot meal. That’s what’s exciting to me. A nutritious, hot meal in a community setting, that to me is the impact in the community.”
The Mission Kitchen, said Michaels and Christ, will allow clients to stretch their food budgets. Additionally, since most of them don’t have transportation, the only walkable options to purchase food are a nearby convenience store and a gas station, which offer expensive, unhealthy food.
The $605,000 project, being funded with private donations and some grants, and a partnership with the
Center Township Trustee’s Office, will offer hot meals three times a week and serve about 50 people at a time.
The 1,400-squarefoot building, which will complement the food pantry’s exterior, will have a commercial kitchen and be open for church groups, local organizations, families and individuals to volunteer their time to serve meals.
“We’re hoping to open it sometime between August and October,” Porter said, noting weather will dictate how quickly construction, slated to start in the spring, moves along.