GREEN STREET ARTS
Middletown awards Green Street building to St. Vincent de Paul, which hopes to expand services
Middletown soup kitchen to take over former arts center.
MIDDLETOWN – St. Vincent de Paul, a Middletown soup kitchen, has been selected to take over the Green Street Arts Center building.
“They do a tremendous amount of work for the city,” Mayor Dan Drew said. “They’re known for providing food to needy people, but they have a significant breadth of services beyond that.”
Following a monthslong bid process, Drew announced last week that he had selected the nonprofit to move into the former neighborhood arts and after school center.
In addition to providing a soup kitchen, St. Vincent de Paul runs the Amazing Grace food pantry and supportive housing units. It also provides drug and alcohol abuse counseling and assists people with accessing behavioral healthcare and social services. Executive Director Ethel Higgins said that the organization plans to move its soup kitchen and administrative offices to the Green Street property.
The building at 51 Green St. is owned by the city and, until June 30, was leased by Wesleyan University. The university said the center was supposed to have become self-sufficient when it opened in 2005, but Wesleyan was providing more and more direct funding each year and elected not to continue.
“It’s an organization that I think needs room to grow. This is a unique opportunity, because it gives more space,” Drew said.
Bids to re-use the property were due in October and four proposals were sent to the city, including one from St. Vincent de Paul. The economic development commission vetted the proposals, which also included one from the Community Health Center and one for the Middletown Green Community Center. The common council will need to ratify the agreement between the city and St. Vincent de Paul in February before ownership of the building is officially transferred.
Higgins said that moving the location from Main Street to the building on Green Street will give them the ability to expand services. Higgins said the larger space would allow the organization to collaborate more with community members, implement more workforce development programs and provide more healthcare to the homeless. She also said that revamping the facilities with the latest technologies and equipment would create a more welcoming and private environment for patrons.
“We’d like to go ahead and take it to the next step,” Higgins said. “This move would give us an opportunity to implement these changes.”
Higgins said the organization was happy to learn they’d been selected to re-use the building but acknowledged that the organization is still waiting on the agreement to be finalized.
“We were very happy and very humbled,” she said. “We’ve been in this location here for over 30 years and we’ve outgrown it. The fact that the city identifies the work that we do and that we’ll be able to expand services is great.”
In addition to allowing St. Vincent de Paul to grow, the decision to award the bid to the nonprofit adds a building to Middletown’s tax rolls.
St. Vincent de Paul’s Main Street building was not taxable because it belonged to a nonprofit. With the organization moving to a city building, which also was tax exempt, Middletown is gaining a property to add to the grand list.
In a letter to residents announcing the news, Drew said the building will be sold to a “taxable entity whose products or services are in alignment with the city’s goals and plan of conservation and development.”