NEWPORT – With a quick cut of the ribbon on Jan. 15 – the day celebrating the nonprofit’s namesake – the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Community Center formally unveiled the finish product of its 13-month, seven-figure renovation project to help expand the facility and, more importantly, make a stronger impact on Newport County residents the nonprofit serves regularly.
Heather Hole Strout, the MLK Center’s executive director, told Providence Business News on Thursday that approximately 3,300 square feet of space was added to the facility as part of the renovations. Those upgrades, which began in October 2022 and finished back in November 2023, were funded by the organization’s $7 million Building Hope Campaign that raised the necessary funds in just eight months, according to the MLK Center.
Strout said along with existing space being reimagined and additional space now part of the MLK Center, the programming the center offers will now truly be reflected in the new space moving forward.
“We’ve always had excellent programming and are proud of the programs we have offered to the community,” Strout said. “Now, this offers us a more dignified and respectful space for the more than 6,000 people who come here for health and hope every year.”
Strout said the building at 20 Dr. Marcus Wheatland Blvd. that houses the MLK Center used to be a United Services Organization building in the 1940s for Black military service during segregation. Over time, despite volunteers working diligently at the nonprofit to “keep it together,” Strout said the MLK Center reached a point where the building was not working to address the necessary community needs anymore, hence the reason for the MLK Center to make physical changes at the facility.
One example Strout noted was when a decade ago the MLK Center in a year distributed 100,000 meals. Those meals she noted include food from its pantry, hot meals it serves. Last year, the MLK Center distributed about 1 million meals, she said.
Strout also said the MLK Center’s lobby prior to the upgrades was too small, resulting in people having to wait outdoors before receiving services. Having people in need waiting out in the cold during the winter for food was “something we were not proud of,” Strout said.
“The building [before the renovations] didn’t work for us anymore,” Strout said.
Now, in addition to enlarging the welcoming entry and lobby, Strout says the MLK Center’s food pantry is now doubled in size, now looks like a “small grocery store” and the kitchen is enlarged with three refrigerators and three freezers for the organization to keep up with the high-demand food needs within Newport County. She said this past year saw a 35% increase in the number of people seeking hunger relief from the MLK Center.
“This renovation is enabling us to serve more people and do it in a more respectful way,” Strout said. She also noted that the MLK Center can now buy more food “in bulk,” which will reduce the organization’s food costs along with keeping up with demand. Plus, its lunch programs will expand from three days a week to five, Strout said.
The center now has a new private community space from the renovations. Strout says before people would need to walk through the community space, say during a yoga class or support groups held in that space, to get to the nonprofit’s educational programming. The community space with the renovations was shifted into the expansion area so that space can offer groups privacy, Strout said.
A couple new gender-neutral bathrooms were installed at the MLK Center as well, Strout said.
Moving forward, the MLK Center with the renovations will also be offered as a warming center for individuals who want to get out of the cold. So far, 52 people have utilized the building for overnight warmth, Strout said.
The center also installed a new preschool classroom to offer additional child care services, which Strout says the MLK Center now has a waiting list for.
“We will have more children here in our preschool, which helps parents get to work and helps kids go off to kindergarten prepared because we can start that base of knowledge for them,” Strout said.
James Bessette is the PBN special projects editor, and also covers the nonprofit and education sectors. You may reach him at Bessette@PBN.com. You may also follow him on Twitter at @James_Bessette.
