Plainfield’s only food pantry may close soon - Norwich Bulletin

Plainfield’s only food pantry may close soon - Norwich Bulletin

PLAINFIELD — The sole food pantry serving Plainfield and Sterling is in danger of shuttering in a few weeks after operators said they were given an ultimatum by church officials: Pay $3,000 a month or leave.

Inside the Project Pin Food Pantry at 120 Prospect St. in Moosup on Thursday, Director Tim Kettle walked around a storage area inside the basement of the former All Hollows School.

Shelves held cans of soup and vegetables stacked near industrial refrigerators holding jugs of milk and shrink-wrapped meat. Bottles of water and iced tea faced boxes filled with bread and macaroni.

“We moved here 10 years ago from St. John’s Church in Plainfield,” Kettle said. “At the time, the pastor of All Hallows Church, Father Damien Tomiczek, told me we could operate from here rent-free as long as we wanted.”

Kettle said 15 months ago, he was contacted by the parish’s new priest, Rev. Tadeusz Zadorozny.

“He told me the church was going to close because of a diocese consolidation and we’d have to leave,” Kettle said. “The closing never happened, but we were asked to pay $700 a month in rent.”

Kettle said the pantry’s board of directors were able to come up with an alternate stipend figure of $500 a month, enough to cover some utility costs for a building also used by local scouts and other community groups.

“And we’ve paid that religiously every month,” he said. “Then about two weeks ago, we got a call from the church telling us unless we could come up with $3,000 each month, we’d have to leave by July 1.”

The pantry’s school location is part of the All Hollows Church, which absorbed Wauregan’s Sacred Heart parish in 2017 as part of a diocese-level restructuring plan conducted in reaction to dwindling attendance numbers, high church building operational costs and fewer priests.

Tomiczek said a planned July 1 merger of All Hallows with two other local churches, St. John the Apostle in Plainfield and Canterbury’s St. Augustine, prompted him to revisit the pantry’s status.

“All three churches will merge into one parish and because of that we need to change how that school building where the pantry is located is used,” he said. “Once the merger happens, all the other groups using the school – religious education, scouts and others – will be moved to the church’s main building, leaving the pantry the sole occupant.”

Tomiczek said he has not received a formal answer from the pantry’s board of directors whether they will take responsibility for utility, liability and other costs for the school structure.

“As difficult as it is, they would have to take on those costs as the only group using the building,” he said.

Tomiczek said he’s willing to work out a temporary, month-to-month payment plan with pantry officials.

“I’m open to reviewing a number with them,” he said.

The pantry, founded by Kettle's mother and others, serves roughly 400 families each month and hands out approximately 750 Thanksgiving food baskets each year.

“It’s not a perfect spot; there’s stairs that mean we have to bring food up to people who can’t come down to the pantry,” said Sterling resident and volunteer Dave Shippee. “But people in the area, where there aren’t a lot of jobs, need this place, especially since it's in walking distance for many."

Kettle said he’s reached out via email, phone and by letter to the Diocese of Norwich, which oversees All Hollows Church, but has received no response. 

Kettle said he and other volunteers have for more than a year kept an eye out for an alternate pantry location, but the pantry's financial realities - it operates through donations and a small community grant- has made that avenue challenging.

“The rents have all been too high at other places we've looked at,” he said. “If we have to close, it will be only temporarily. My hope is news of our situation will bring people forward with location ideas.”