Construction of Lake Placid Thrift shop, food pantry continues

Uihlein Foundation board member Jim McKenna, far right, hands a $100,000 to officials from Lake Placid Thrive and Thrift Monday for construction of the new food pantry and thrift shop. Also in the photo, from left, are Thrive and Thrift board Chair Jim Koenig and Executive Director Linda Young and Steve Sama, of the Lake Placid-based housing nonprofit Homestead Development Corporation, who is working with Simplex Homes to design and fabricate the building. (Enterprise photo — Andy Flynn)

The following is from the August 7th, 2024 issue of the Adirondack Daily Enterprise. Read it on their website here.

LAKE PLACID — The fourth and final modular unit of the new Lake Placid Thrive and Thrift food pantry/thrift shop arrived on Monday, Aug. 5 as “crane day” approaches. Meanwhile, promised funds are beginning to arrive.

Jim McKenna, a board member at the Henry Uihlein II and Mildred A. Uihlein Foundation, delivered a $100,000 check to the construction site, located on Cummings Road next to the Shipman Youth Center, about an hour before the modular unit arrived on Monday afternoon. Accepting the check were Thrive and Thrift board Chair Jim Koening, Executive Director Linda Young and board member Jackie Kelly, a Lake Placid village trustee.

McKenna called the food pantry/thrift shop project the “fabric of the community” prior to handing over the check.

“That’s what the Uihlein Foundation is for, you know, community goals,” he told the group before lining up for a photograph.

Also on hand was Steve Sama, a local developer from the Lake Placid-based housing nonprofit Homestead Development Corporation who is working with Simplex Homes, a modular construction company based in Pennsylvania, to design and fabricate the building. Homestead and Simplex recently teamed up to complete the 22-unit Fawn Valley housing development on Wesvalley Road.

Crane day, set for Thursday, Aug. 22, is when the four modular units will be married as one and placed on top of the foundation, which has already been constructed at the site. Luck Brothers Inc., of Plattsburgh, will be handling the crane, according to Sama. In June, the company also used a crane to raise the new steeple on top of St. Agnes Catholic Church in Lake Placid, where the current food pantry is located in the basement.

Lake Placid Thrive and Thrift is the new 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that progressed from the Ecumenical Charities program, of which Young was its founder and manager of the food pantry and the former Helping Hands Thrift Shop on George & Bliss Lane next to the Lake Placid marina. The thrift shop has since closed.

“We’re just happy to be able to continue serving the way we’ve always served. That’s extremely important,” Young said Monday.

The Uihlein Foundation, based at Heaven Hill Farm on Bear Cub Lane in Lake Placid, gives grants primarily for education, the arts and human services.