An old covenant housing building, sitting three stories tall on Christ the King Parish’s property in Concord, has been serving as a food pantry for the greater capital region for at least 13 years.
Inside, the basement is packed with large piles of canned and boxed goods. The first floor hosts bread, dry goods and a large walk-in freezer. It also is where they conduct business with pantry clients, which can lack privacy.
Getting goods into the building can also be a challenge. The loading dock for the pantry intersects with steep stairs, leading into the basement. Volunteers must use a makeshift drop chute to load donations inside.
But thanks to a $1 million donation from a former congregant, church leaders are now working to open a new, more accessible food pantry — with more space for donations that they previously couldn’t accommodate. They plan to name the new facility after the donor, Theresa Downing, who died in 2022.
“She was a school teacher in the area, and she was very active here,” said Father Richard Roberge, Christ the King’s pastor. “Came to church all the time. She was not able to participate, she had some health issues, so she was not able to work here but she had a lot of close friends.”
The gift from Downing, along with other donations and collections the church has been saving for years, will help the pantry expand into a new building with an accessible entrance for visitors and volunteers. Roberge said they’ll need a lot of money to cover the costs of construction, since they’re razing the current building and erecting a new one that can serve a wider range of people. They’re hoping to raise an additional $750,000.
The new center will be a one-story building with large shopping aisles that allow visitors to choose what goods to bring home. Roberge noted that people might not always be able to use the ingredients provided in pre-packaged boxes, due to dietary restrictions or other concerns.
“We want to make a sort of like a little supermarket type of process, where people can come in with a volunteer and they go around and they pick what they want off the shelves,” Roberge said.
The building will also offer accessible bathrooms for visitors and walk-in refrigerators and freezers. In the past, Roberge said they have had to reject donations like milk due to an inability to hold them.
When the church’s food pantry first opened in 1975, it was housed in the rectory on property. Eventually, it moved to a garage and, later, into the old covenant housing building where it currently sits. Right now, the pantry is open four evenings a week, from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m.
“But just during those hours and those four days, I think we have a pretty big impact,” Roberge said. “We give enough food for nine meals per person. So if we have three families or three people in a family, they'll each get nine meals.”
Many of the people that the pantry serves are often stuck between paying rent and having meals, Roberge said, and the church has seen a rising need for food assistance in recent years.
When asked if he’ll miss the old building, Roberge said, with laughter, that he won’t.
“Nothing personal, you know,” Roberge said. “We did have it checked out to see if it was historically significant, but it wasn't.”
