Fort Mill Care Center gets new building

It may not be perfect, but for Carol Higgins, it’s close enough.

Higgins, director of the Fort Mill Care Center, was exhausted but relieved after the center closed on property Friday that will eventually become its new home.

“It was a long road with a lot of twists and turns, but we’re really excited,” Higgins said.

The Care Center, which has been operating out of a storefront on Tom Hall Street since 2013, acquired what used to be the Firehouse Grille on Old Nation Road (U.S. 21 Business), just outside Fort Mill town limits.

For more than a decade, the center operated on Banks Street near the heart of downtown Fort Mill in a building owned by the Fort Mill school district. Built in the 1950s, the building was part of the old Fort Mill High School complex. The district didn’t charge the center for use of the space, but in 2013 it decided to put the property on the market and the complex has since been razed.

Last year, Higgins said the center, a not-for-profit organization that helps Fort Mill residents in need with everything from food to help paying for utilities and prescriptions, was close to acquiring a building on Elliott Street, but the deal fell through.

“We were negotiating to buy the property and we thought we had it,” Higgins said. “We even went to a lawyer and drew up a contract, but the owner decided to go with a different offer.”

Higgins said she was hoping to find a building that was close to the 5,000 square feet the center had at the Banks Street site, where it operated a full food pantry that included perishables such as meat, eggs and milk. The old Firehouse Grille, closed for several years, is just under 3,000 square feet, but it sits on nearly an acre of property, allowing room to expand. Much of the space will have to be reconfigured.

“This is a restaurant, so it pretty much has to be gutted and we’re not sure if we’ll get volunteers or we’ll have to pay for it,” Higgins said. “Likely we’ll have to do both.”

Sometime since the restaurant was closed, thieves stripped away valuable scraps.

“The building was empty so long the condenser outside, every piece of metal was stolen,” Higgins said.

The Care Center, which has a building fund its been growing for more than a decade, also secured a $250,000 construction loan, Higgins said. She said the plan is to build a warehouse on the property to store donated food. The center gives out approximately 8,000 pounds of food each month.

Named an “Angel” organization by the state because nearly all its revenue is used to provide services, the Care Center will inherit a walk-in refrigerator from the former restaurant but will need a commercial freezer as well as other equipment and furnishings. There’s no projected date when the center might move from the Tom Hall Street location.

“We have no idea right now,” Higgins said.

“There’s no date in sight, but we will get a capital campaign started immediately.”

This story was originally published February 6, 2015 at 11:36 PM with the headline "Fort Mill Care Center gets new building."