After a quarter-century of feeding the hungry next to the heart of Baltimore's Roman Catholic community, Our Daily Bread is about to move to a new home - on the edge of downtown, adjacent to the city's jail.
Renamed the Our Daily Bread Employment Center, the $15 million, 52,000-square- foot facility will expand the offerings of the city's largest soup kitchen far beyond feeding Baltimore's homeless and poor to provide such services as job training.
Patrons will "basically see the same meal, but they'll have increased opportunities," says Dennis Murphy, director of the new facility.
First housed in a Franklin Street rowhouse, Our Daily Bread now serves an average of 700 lunches every day next to the Basilica of the Assumption on Cathedral Street.
Staff members and volunteers expect to serve about the same number of meals in the new facility, which is being dedicated today, though the new kitchen has features to make meal assembly more efficient, such as warming stations and more storage for donations.
Officials also hope that more guests will enroll in job training now offered under the same roof, so that eventually they will no longer need the free meal. In the past, Murphy says, clients would bypass the services at St. Jude's Employment Center on Franklin Street, around the corner from the existing Our Daily Bread facility.
Some of the motivation will sit in the dining room itself. Formerly homeless men from Christopher Place Employment Academy, a residential job-readiness program that will use the second and third floor of the new building, will eat two meals a day there, dressed in shirts and ties.
"Not everybody will go to Christopher Place, but at least they'll see that they could have something better," Murphy says.
The Maryland Re-Entry Partnership, which helps men rejoin society after incarceration, will also be based at the new center.
The new building, surrounded by correctional facilities and a strip club and separated from downtown by the Jones Falls Expressway, was chosen after a long search. Downtown business owners had complained for years about nuisances and crimes at Our Daily Bread's current site, across from the central Enoch Pratt Free Library.
But the relocation of the soup kitchen and other services a half-mile away, funded with public and private money, has raised concerns that it exiles the homeless and concentrates services in a location that is not as accessible.
"They deem the only area acceptable for poor people is next to the jail. They don't see how it offends human dignity," says Brendan Walsh of Viva House, a Catholic Worker community. Our Daily Bread's current location adjacent to the basilica is symbolic, and moving it is a violation of the church's theology, Walsh says.
"The common table should be next to the altar table," he says.
For example, Walsh suggests that Catholic Charities could have put these programs in the Rochambeau, an apartment building torn down by the Archdiocese of Baltimore to construct a prayer garden dedicated to Pope John Paul II.
Catholic Charities says the poor will still be served at the current location. The building will be renovated to house My Sister's Place, a day shelter for homeless women and children, as well as the Samaritan Center, which offers referrals and other aid.
Though My Sister's Place will offer three meals a day at that location, it is expected to serve about 125 women and children - fewer than at Our Daily Bread.
Rather than resisting the change, another major Baltimore service provider plans to follow Our Daily Bread. Health Care for the Homeless, now on the west side of the city, expects to break ground as early as next year on a $17.5 million facility a few blocks south of the new Our Daily Bread center, says Kevin Lindamood, the group's vice president for external affairs.
The site is also near two other missions, he says, so it is close to other services for the poor.
"I think a lot of us in the homeless-services field initially cringed that services were being put over immediately across from the jail and kind of shoved over mentally," Lindamood says. But now there's a recognition that the selected location for both these organizations are the only places close to downtown for facilities of their size.
Kirby Fowler, president of the Downtown Partnership, and Robin Budish of the Historic Charles Street Association, both describe the new facility as a win-win situation.
"We care deeply about the plight of the homeless, and we feel that the improvement in services is beneficial to the homeless as well as the overall downtown community," says Fowler, who is also on the board of Health Care for the Homeless and chairman of Baltimore's Board of Homeless Services.
"No one has a problem with the provision of services to the homeless in that area," he says. But it was the impact of Our Daily Bread on surrounding businesses and residents that raised concerns.
The new location is served by several bus lines but is farther away from light rail on the west side of the city. One patron, Joseph Carter, 24, says he travels from Mondawmin Mall every day for meals before he heads to class. He says he will keep coming, though. "I'll just have to find another way," he says.
Another patron, Lisa Corporal, says she works on Paca Street, and the new site is too far for her to come during her lunch break.
The roots for Our Daily Bread developed in the 1970s. Priests and nuns would feed people who knocked on the kitchen door at the rectory of the basilica, but more and more people started to come, according to a booklet about the program published last year for its 25th anniversary. Catholic Charities opened Our Daily Bread in 1981.
A decade later, it opened the building next to the basilica. Pope John Paul II ate a meal at Our Daily Bread in 1995, and Cardinal William H. Keeler hopes Pope Benedict XVI will do the same. The archbishop has invited the pope to visit the restored Basilica of the Assumption and the new employment center.
But for decades, the procedures have remained the same. Faith groups from every denomination put together casseroles using approved recipes and freeze them. They deliver them to the center, where the casseroles are stored and reheated for meals. For example, women from Heritage United Church of Christ in Northwest Baltimore bring 35 macaroni-and-cheese casseroles each month.
Each day, volunteers apportion donated desserts, prepare vegetarian options and - from 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. - serve guests, as they call the patrons. They take seats at available spots at tables and volunteers wait on them, bringing meals on china, as well as tea or water. The center also provides breakfast to senior citizens and people with disabilities.
When volunteers serve the last lunch at the current site June 3, Our Daily Bread will have operated for 9,500 consecutive days, Murphy says. Lunch will resume the next day at the new site, with no interruption.
Catholic Charities is handing out canvas backpacks to guests with information about the new site this week.
When the new location for Our Daily Bread was announced two years ago, some volunteers were immediately concerned about safety because the site is so close to jail and prison facilities. But Pat Rosner of Glen Arm, who has volunteered once a week for at least a decade, says those concerns have eased.
"The concept of the location being next to the jail did throw some people, and they wanted to know if there's going to be a walk from parking to the building, just what the physical situation would be," says Rosner, a former registered nurse.
About 35 volunteers work at Our Daily Bread each day, and they will have priority access to the parking lot behind the center, according to Catholic Charities staff members.
The new center will also have a volunteer lounge with room to store coats and other items. In the old center, volunteers share space in a dry-goods storage area.
For those waiting for meals, the new center offers major improvements - particularly a covered walkway. At Cathedral Street, people line up outdoors before 9:30 a.m., more than an hour before the center opens.
"Sometimes the weather is horrific, and you feel terrible walking past them to go inside," Rosner says.
Paul Christ, who owns the Dog House carryout restaurant next door to the new center, says he has been pleased with what Catholic Charities staff members have promised, but he is reserving judgment until the center opens.
"They've been very open with us and fair, and they've addressed our concerns," Christ says. Officials redesigned the building so patrons would exit toward Madison Street, away from his Fallsway business. He has also been told that security personnel will keep people from loitering.
"Up until now, we haven't had any problems," he says. "What holds in the future, I don't know."
Christopher Place will house up to 100 men annually. The program teaches residents interpersonal skills and follows them for a year after they obtain new employment.
For the program, the new classrooms on the second floor and dormitories on the third floor are an improvement over the well-worn 42-bed facility on Eager Street.
"We want this building to be inspirational to the men. We want them to think, 'I can have a better life.'" Murphy says. "We want the programs obviously to help them with that, but also their environment."
Ronald Taylor, a Christopher Place graduate who now is a chef at Our Daily Bread, describes the new facility for both programs as "awesome. There is no comparison."
liz.kay@baltsun.com