The Presbyterian Community Center has stood in the gap for low-income Roanoke and Vinton families since 1967.
Its mission is to address homelessness and poverty in the area’s underserved community. The center is housed in the Belmont-Fallon neighborhood, in buildings that are nearing 100 years old, with leaking roofs, insufficient office space and only two toilets for 15 staff members and dozens of after-school students.
In early 2025, all of that will change. PCC broke ground on a new 19,000-square-foot building Wednesday, adjacent to its current facility at the corner of 13th Street Southeast and Jamison Avenue. The project is estimated to cost approximately $6 million, though a final number won’t be available from Lionberger Construction until early next week, according to Daniel Wickham, a Realtor with Divaris Real Estate who is the PCC Board of Directors’ property committee chair.
“Today, as we break ground together, we celebrate the largest investment by a nonprofit in southeast Roanoke in decades to accompany the extraordinary new growth in this most beautiful part of our city,” Roanoke Vice Mayor Joe Cobb said during the ceremony.
During the same event, the community learned that longtime PCC Executive Director Karen McNally is retiring, to be replaced by Nicole Jennings, currently the director of family programs. Jennings will take the helm on Friday.
“As the new executive director, I’m ready to go, push forward, get this building completed and see what other missions that we can complete here at the Presbyterian Community Center,” Jennings said.
The project will allow the nonprofit to expand its reach, improve programs and prepare for future growth.
“This incredible place will not just be a new facility but a place full of kindness, compassion and love, which our community needs now more than ever, with offices for staff, a large pantry, a commercial kitchen, new classrooms, a gymnasium and a playground. This beacon of love and hope in this community will shine brightly,” Wickham said.
The center has three main programs: emergency services, pathways for youth, and bridges out of poverty.
Rena Hubbard and April Turner both say that PCC’s programs have changed their lives.
The women each have children who have graduated from the Pathways for Youth after-school program. Hubbard’s oldest daughter will graduate from Hollins University in 2025 as a result of PCC’s influence, she said. Likewise, Turner claims that her son wouldn’t be a Marine without the program.
When Turner was battling cancer, PCC staff members taught her children how to cook so they could take care of her, she said. PCC also enabled her to earn her high school diploma through Penn Foster, an accredited adult education program.
Hubbard and Turner graduated from PCC’s first Getting Ahead program, an eight-week course that equips impoverished participants to break free from poverty by offering courses in budgeting, nutrition, gardening, banking and job hunting.
“Sometimes you don’t know how to get started. We were willing to find jobs and all, but we didn’t know how to go about it,” Hubbard said, adding that the class helped build her self-esteem. Since graduating from the course, she has found a job with Carilion Clinic.
The Bridges Out of Poverty program offers training for area churches and other organizations to offer similar programs in their communities. Since the program began in 2018, PCC has trained 237 people to equip individuals to rise out of poverty.
“With a new future of PCC, we’ll be able to offer more tools and education resources for our clients,” said Ebony Hurt, the organization’s director of emergency services.
Under the emergency services program, residents who need help paying for rent, utilities or food can apply for financial assistance. In 2023, PCC provided $92,792 in financial aid to 335 households that covered 878 individuals, according to McNally.
That same year, PCC distributed food valued at $177,495 to 2,164 households covering 4,428 individuals, including 1,314 children. Much of that food was donated by Feeding Southwest Virginia and community partners, she said.
Some of the produce that PCC distributes is grown in Carilion’s nearby Morningside Urban Farm, McNally said. The farm is a community outreach program that promotes wellness in southeast Roanoke by teaching residents how to grow their own food.
Morningside is within walking distance of the anticipated Riverdale development. It is also the site of a mountain bike park. Just this spring, Roanoke installed a protected bike lane on nearby Ninth Street.
If things seem to be looking up for the neighborhood, it’s all part of a larger plan.
In 2019, the Belmont-Fallon neighborhood was named a Roanoke target area. For the last five years, city planners have been determined to pour efforts into improving the neighborhood. According to the plan on the city’s website, they would build new houses, rehabilitate old ones and improve streetscapes.
“PCC has been one of our key partners in that area, and they have been part of our steering committee,” said Katharine Gray, Roanoke land use and urban design planner.
“They had a building that has been less than optimal for many years,” she said.
“The [new] building will let them double the services that they are able to provide to our community. The impact is tremendous for our whole community and particularly the Belmont-Fallon area,” Gray said.
McNally would love to see the Belmont-Fallon neighborhood revitalized with an increase in homeownership, she said. She acknowledges that the city is working towards that goal, giving Community Development Block Grant funds to Habitat for Humanity to increase home ownership in the area.
“There’s so many rentals in absent landlords right now, and we see so many people who are paying exorbitant rents,” McNally said.
The utility payments are higher too, Hurt said, because the houses are older and aren’t well-insulated. Last year, PCC provided resources to improve insulation. The organization was able to pay for three months of electric bills when residents presented their statements, Hurt said.
“The three-month thing has been fabulous. A lot of people are really in a hole, and that would keep them in their homes and safe and keep homelessness at bay,” McNally said.
That program is at risk. PCC did not receive Community Development Block Grant money from the city this year. In 2023, PCC received $39,193 in CDBG funds from the city, most of which went toward the electric bill program. PCC received the grant for the last two years, McNally said.
The center relies heavily on funding from grants and donations from churches and individuals, McNally said. PCC employs five full-time and 10 part-time staff members.
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McNally has been PCC’s executive director for 19 years. She’s ready to relax a little and spend time with her daughter and grandchildren in Alabama, she said.
She is stepping down on the heels of a huge building campaign, a wish-upon-a-star campaign with roots that stretch back to 2016 when the estate of Trina Ramzinsky left a large enough bequest to the center for PCC to purchase the land adjacent to its building in 2017. Since then, the organization has been in the midst of a capital campaign and has had additional help from another individual the board refers to as its angel donor.
The donor is a former elementary schoolteacher who loves kids and sees the need for organizations like PCC, according to Bev Fitzpatrick, PCC’s board chair. (Disclosure: Fitzpatrick is a member of our community advisory committee but committee members have no say in news decisions; see our policy.)
The campaign isn’t over yet. PCC has another $1.5 million to raise.
When the new building is completed, PCC will increase its after-school enrollment capacity by 60%, to 80 students, McNally said.
The after-school program currently serves 36 students and has a waitlist, according to Hurt.
Families must live in southeast or northeast Roanoke and apply for admission, Hurt said. Participants benefit from mentoring, help with homework, fitness activities, field trips, devotionals and free school supplies, among other things.
The students will enjoy use of new classrooms and learning spaces, including a gymnasium and playground, Hurt said.
Staff members work in cubicles, with no privacy for intake appointments. Clients facing crises may have to share information across a narrow aisle from one another. In the new space, staff will have more private offices, allowing clients to be treated with more dignity.
The new building will offer more storage space for the food pantry, which currently overruns every available room, shelf, and counter when needed. Even the children’s fitness area becomes a sorting space around holidays like Thanksgiving, according to Hurt.
“We have to be able to have food, so it’s kind of a push and a shove sometimes,” Hurt said.