After more than five years of planning & fundraising, Cherokee County Meals On Wheels is finally off and running with our much needed building expansion. Seeing the need for more space in our facility and trying to meet the needs of the community, we were forced to recognize the fact that our current building was not only maxed out on space, but was also becoming a challenge to do day to day operations sufficiently in. We began fundraising for this project in 2019, and have since raised over $700,000 to meet our $1.4 million budget for this new addition, raising over $100,000 from our faithful donors in the fall of 2020, in the middle of pandemic woes and financial instability.
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| Artist's rendering of our new facility. The right side of the building is our current home. The addition will connect to our current building and will be an updated paint theme with connected brick. |
We are incredibly excited to be able to offer to the community a larger kitchen that will accommodate up to 1000 meals, a new lobby & offices, and, with our current building, more storage space. Our current building has long since been cramped for space. We haven't been able to have board meeting in our building for over 3 years because we don't have the room for everyone to meet. Our staff of 7 is not able to have staff meetings in the same room because of the storage space that we have had to turn our conference room into. We have already began construction on this new facility that will adjoin our current building and we are hoping to be able to complete construction in 8 months to a year. Our current building will become storage and will be connected to the new addition. Our new construction will be built utilizing the lot that we purchased a few years ago on the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr St. side of our building.
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| April 26, 2022 Grading begins |
For those interested in being a donor for our new home, we are providing a special wall of honor for our building donors in our new lobby. If you would like to give a gift of your choosing, please click THIS LINK to give securely online, or make your check payable to Cherokee County Meals On Wheels, and note on it "Building Fund".
We have begun this blog to keep you updated on our progress! This past couple of weeks we have already seen the lot being graded and the footings poured. Sossamon Construction is the contractor for this project and our architectural firm is Adeptus Architecture out of Greenville, with Gaffney native Barry Agnew as our architect for this special project. This plan will allow us to continue meal production and operations throughout the construction with hopefully very little or no down time as we transition from one kitchen to another in the future. Please be patient with us as we navigate parking and other temporary inconveniences as we undergo construction.
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| View from the drive through, May 10, 2022. There is starting to be an outline for exterior walls! |
One of the special things for us is to see how Meals On Wheels connects people together, and this construction is no exception. P & L Erosion, a company out of Blacksburg and a business partner who has volunteered with us for over 20 years, was the company who did our grading. We didn't know that until we met Sonny Sealy in the parking lot on our way out one day and he was finishing up with his crew. Sonny has delivered meals on Wednesdays in Blacksburg. I'm sure there will be many other contractors with ties to CCMOW along the way, and that's what makes this project special. It's not just our new kitchen, it's the kitchen of the community: something that we all share and something that we contribute to and can be proud to be a part of.
You are all invited to our Groundbreaking Ceremony on Tuesday, May 24th at 1:00pm here at 403 W. Montgomery St. Come a be a part of this historic event!
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