Monomoy Community Services Renovations On Schedule; Fundraisers Aim To Close Financial Gap

CHATHAM – Renovations to the Monomoy Community Services building on Depot Road are expected to be completed in time for the summer. 

 In the meantime, the human services organization is planning fundraising events and outreach to complete the financial side of the building renovation project.

 “To us, it feels like the home stretch,” said Executive Director Theresa Malone. 

 The project, which began in the fall, involves extensive renovations to the 100-year-old building, which houses MCS’s offices, licensed childcare and afterschool programs. Along with new heating and cooling systems and windows, a new 1,000-square-foot addition will create space to house the Chatham Children’s Fund, which operates in conjunction with MCS to help local families in need of clothing, food or financial assistance with fuel, medical expenses and unforeseen challenges.

 With a $500,000 capital improvement grant from the state Department of Early Education and Childcare as well as donations, more than three-quarters of the $1.5 million cost of the project has been raised. The upcoming efforts are aimed at closing the funding gap.

 MCS has been around in one form or another — it began as a drop-in center in the 1960s — for more than 50 years, and there are plenty of alumni locally and spread across the country. “A House Full of Memories” hopes to tap into that network “to keep us going another 50 years,” Malone said.

 On March 21, MCS will host “Designer Bag Bingo” at 3 Fins Coffeehouse on Crowell Road. Tickets at $50 include game cards, raffle tickets and table snacks. In each game of bingo, the winner will receive a designer bag. The event runs from 5 to 8 p.m., and tickets go on sale Feb. 23 through the MCS website, monomoy.org. There will also be a cash bar.

 “This is not your grandma’s bingo,” noted Malone.

 It’s a difficult time to raise money, she added. “Everything feels so uncertain,” she said. But the goal isn’t a big reach — under $400,000 — noted Children’s Fund President Pat Vreeland. And the end result will be a permanent home for the Children’s Fund, which has moved between several locations over the past several years. 

 “In the long run, this is where we belong,” Vreeland said of the MCS building.

 Malone said the new space is shaping up to be “magical.” It will be “very functional,” she said. “Definitely more function than form.”

 “We want this to be a representation of how much good stuff goes on at Monomoy,” she said, noting that the agency is really a “family resource center” providing referrals and overseeing the town’s childcare voucher program. 

 She praised building designer A3 Architects and contractor York Building and Construction, who have kept the project on schedule and responded to some of the project’s unique needs as a childcare center. Most recently new doors and windows were installed. The Chatham-Harwich Newcomers Club woodworkers are also providing custom cubbies for the daycare program.

 Malone also credits the Monomoy School Department for allowing MCS to use space in the Chatham Elementary School during construction, as well as St. Christopher’s Episcopal Church, which provided office space.

 “Kids are such a good equalizer,” Malone said, noting that there is a lot of excitement about the new space among MCS students. A section of the construction fence was cleared so that everyone, kids included, could watch the progress of the work. “And this is really about the community.”