Big Crowd on Hand Sunday to Help Dedicate the New and Beautifully Appointment Helpline House Facility

Helpline House is back – back to its permanent location at 282 Knechtel Way NE, after the completion of a major year-long expansion project.

Hundreds of islanders lined up Sunday afternoon outside the newly christened Helpline House building to listen to speeches and tour the new 12,000 square foot building. The organization, which serves as the island’s primary food bank, has moved several times since it’s early inception in 1968 in a cramped garage, before landing at its current location some four decades ago.

A lot has changed for the nonprofit in that arch of time, prompting backers and volunteers to pull together a $12 million capital campaign quest to expand the facility’s footprint and services. “The space hasn’t changed that much (over the years),” said board member and fundraising chair Ralph Spillinger, “but the island has and the needs have. … Our current space (was) wholly inadequate for what we do.”

Besides offering food for those in need, Helpline House offers up a bevy of services to islanders and off islanders. Among those are scholarships for kids, social services, rent assistance, mental health counseling, financial aid, house and energy assistance, legal help and more.

Sunday’s dedication on June 7th was exactly a year to the day when board members and island influentials donned hard hats and shovels and performed a groundbreaking ceremony on the site.  “It took four years to accomplish this,” said Helpline House Board President Annie Hodges. “We had over 1,000 people help” with the process and some “382 donors … this project was done on budget, and on time in 11 months.”

On Monday, June 8th, Helpline House will open its doors to customers after staff and volunteers complete the move from its temporary quarters at the former Frontier Bank Building on the corner of Wallace Way and Hildebrand Way.

Behind the need for the new building – constructed on roughly the same footprint – and expanded services, is a steady increase in demand for food and other programs. From the outside looking in, Bainbridge Island appears to be a wealthy, upscale enclave, which it is in many respects. But dig below the surface and there are some pockets of real need here. Not everyone is a tech millionaire or a high paid lawyer. Some people have lost their jobs, or have found themselves in financial trouble, and seek out Helpline House’s services to keep going.

“When our current building was built over 40 years ago, it would have been hard to imagine that we’d serve close to 500 households in a week in the food bank alone (that was the record high set one week last year),” said  Maria Metzler, the nonprofit’s Executive Director in a previous interview. “Additionally, the building wasn’t built with the services in mind that we offer today – again due to community need.”

Metzler continued, “Our old structure (was) aging, it need(ed) upgrades in nearly all areas like wiring, HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning), and so on, and is not at all ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act, passed in 1990) compliant or accessible. The new building will be an improvement in so many ways.”

Helpline House volunteers raised $12 million to build the new facility from grants, foundations, private donations, the State Department of Commerce, and the organization’s on-going reserves.

The nonprofit is just one of a handful of local organizations that have completed, or are about to launch, capital fundraising campaigns. Two years ago, Bainbridge Performing Arts put the finishing touches on its $20 million campaign to build the new Buxton Center. Later this year, the Bainbridge Island Community Senior Center and the Bainbridge History Museum will embark on capital campaigns of their own. BICSC is seeking $22 million to do a massive upgrade on its Waterfront Park facility, while BHM is hoping to raise $5 million to overhaul and expand its existing space, just off of Eriksen Avenue in Downtown Winslow. Further out, the BARN is planning a major expansion of its campus off of New Brooklyn Road.

Local architect Jonathan Davis, co-founder of Davis Studio Architecture + Design, (https://davisstudioad.com/) was the driving architectural and design force behind the remake of Helpline House. Davis, who designed The Walk, a multi-generational townhouse community on Madrona Lane, and phases of The Grow Community, among other projects, re-imagined the space, which doubled in size to accommodate all the services the Helpline House offers.

Under the Davis’s plan, the one-acre site includes 50 parking spaces and reconfigured approaches to providing services, such as the concept of “one front door,” part of what Metzler, Davis and Spillinger call Helpline House’s “one community approach.”

The new building’s roof includes Solar Panels that Davis said,  “will generate almost 100 percent of (Helpline’s) energy needs.” which is their biggest monthly cost.

In the new layout, food deliveries will occur in the rear of the building. A new commercial kitchen will allow Helpline House – which has 12 full-time employees – to do more with what it receives in donations. Thanks to a food service consultant, Davis and company received help in designing the new food bank, which is expanded from 300 square feet in its former configuration to 1200 square feet. It includes “a lot of natural light,” Davis said, and “views down to the lobby.”

Davis added an elevator to the second floor, where some nine social service offices will be located. On the first floor, a conference room – that will double as a community room – will be located just off the main lobby and will include a separate entrance for after-hours activities.

There’s also a “porch pantry” in the food bank, with beautiful built-in boxes made by BARN volunteers, for visitors to use after hours. Not everyone who accesses Helpline Houses wants to be seen, so this entry provides some autonomy, Davis and others said. “People don’t (always) want to be recognized by someone,” he explained. “It’s not the first thing you see. It’s not front and center.”

So who is the typical Helpline House client, if there is such a thing? “One of the best parts about Helpline House is that there is no typical client,” Metzler said. “We all need help at different times and in different ways.  Some come to Helpline weekly; some come once or twice a year when needs arise.  We have folks who work in the Post Office, our grocery stores, medical and dental offices, our dance studios, with the school district, at Islandwood, and more. We have folks who are on fixed incomes due to age or disabilities.  We have folks who are currently experiencing homelessness and/or don’t have an income at the moment. … We serve our community in many ways and we’re all better for it.”

Added Spillinger, who doubled as a project manager for the new facility, “This building ups the bar and ups the standard for what Helpline can deliver.”

Photos by Kevin Dwyer and Steve Matthews