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Date: 5/23/2022
BELCHERTOWN – As part of its larger goal to utilize vacant spaces in town to provide artistic, technical and educational pursuits for residents, the Belchertown Community Alliance (BCA) is working on establishing a community kitchen and café.
Sarah Maroney, the BCA’s grants manager and person in charge of the community kitchen, said the inspiration for the community kitchen came after she attended the Cultural Council’s Food Truck Friday event.
“Coming back to town I noticed we don’t really have a space for food trucks to rent out. There’s no central hub for people in this direct area where you can rent out space for culinary classes or if you own a food business to come and do your preparation,” she said.
Seeing the need for the kitchen, Maroney said she joined the Cultural Council where she met the BCA’s Board President April Jasak-Bangs and Select Board Chair Jen Turner.
“We all had this similar idea of really looking at a lot of these areas in town where we have a lot of vacant space that we don’t use – whether it be town buildings, land, there’s a lot of just empty buildings for sale that’s really not being used to its full capacity and sitting with a lot of open space. We put our heads together and created the Belchertown Community Alliance to start looking at that and the best way to use these vacant spots,” she said.
Maroney said she hopes the kitchen can also provide classes based on local agriculture.
“It would also help our local agricultural groups – it would be a small scale – but there’s not really a lot of places for processing or teaching different cooking classes with our local farm ingredients that are so readily available,” she said.
Alongside the BCA’s work in art and culture, Maroney said the idea for a community kitchen is one of the organization’s central focuses.
Maroney said the closest community kitchen is in Greenfield with one planned for Holyoke.
Along with the kitchen, Maroney said the center will also have a café where people can bring their laptops to work or even just relax in a community hub.
“Our plan is to also have a café attached to it so part of this community kitchen’s intention is to also seat a small community-centered café space that will also have room for events like open mic nights, art galleries and really be a spot people in Belchertown can sit and commune together,” she said.
The plan for the café is to be an incubator space for new or growing café businesses.
“It would really be the BCA creating a shell where we provide a building and a support structure for someone to come in and rent out space at an affordable rate – we want to make sure it’s accessible and affordable – and we would have someone come in and actually run a functioning café. They would have a specific kitchen space to run the café,” she said.
She continued, “We envision the kitchen being divided up into different sections so you can have a section the café works out of and then another section where a local caterer or food truck person could come and rent. Then there would be another section of the kitchen the community be welcomed in at certain times to do cooking classes.”
While she could not provide a specific timeline, Maroney said the BCA’s current goal is securing a lease before breaking ground and outfitting the potential community kitchen. With the lease waiting, Maroney said the BCA is continuing its other programs, including its current mural project.
“We’re hoping the second we get a lease secured we can start creating an outdoor venue to do at least small scale programming, and we are in current talks to offer some programming in places we can rent out including the rec center and Town Hall auditorium,” she said.
Maroney also provided an update on the BCA’s recent Spring Forward fundraiser.
“It went well, we had great community support, we didn’t unlock the full $10,000 but we were able to unlock $8,000 in matching. This was our first real fundraiser because we’re still a pretty young organization, so we were very happy with the outcome,” she said.
Maroney said she is excited for the future of the community kitchen.
“We are looking forward to being able to give opportunities to individuals that may not have access to the space they need currently due to restrictions on travel length, affordability and numerous areas. We are looking forward to be able to fill a current gap that’s in our town and helping out some of our local entrepreneurs, in turn that helps the community as a whole,” she said.