By Richard L. Gaw
Staff Writer

For the past several years, in a unified effort to expand its services and relocate from its cramped facility on Cedar Street in Kennett Square Borough, Kennett Area Community Services (KACS) began a conversation that would ultimately develop a concept that would revolutionize the agency, expand its services and create a new and larger home.

After a donation of 5.61 acres of land along West Cypress Street were graciously donated by the Pia family, the conversations became plans and then blueprints for the construction of what would be a one-story, 26,000-square-foot building that would be used for professional offices and as a food cupboard.

The facility’s price tag, originally estimated at $15 million – a figure that is now estimated at $17 million - would be paid for by private and public donations and state funding, and a capital campaign soon followed that galvanized the entire agency and its many area partners.

At the same time KACS, its board and its building and capital campaign committees were moving forward, the agency’s plans were overlapping with the Kennett Borough’s move to the former Genesis Building on South Broad Street, a prime space now occupied by government offices and the borough’s Police Department. As part of its strategic plan to maximize the borough’s assets and improve its finances, Kennett Square Borough Council approached former KACS CEO Leah Reynolds last fall with a proposal to relocate KACS’ operations and establish Borough Hall as its’ new home. 

After several months of further discussions, Borough Council and the KACS Board of Directors recently – and unanimously – approved pursuing negotiations for KACS to purchase a significant portion of space within the main building of Borough Hall. The next steps will include developing a condominium and formal bid process, and all formal actions, including a sale, will likely take place at an upcoming Borough Council meeting. At press time, the purchase price for the space in Borough Hall has not been made public.

“This is an exciting announcement for the Borough of Kennett Square,” Kennett Square Mayor Matt Fetick and Council President Bob Norris said in a statement issued on June 4. “KACS is a great organization and partner that provides vital services to many individuals in our community. We share in their community mission. While there are a number of important details to work through together, we are optimistic that we can bring KACS to Borough Hall, to join our administrative and police staff. 

“Doing so fulfills our vision for this site - a collaborative space built to serve our entire community.” 

While negotiations are ongoing, Carrie Freeman, KACS’ interim chief executive officer and its board secretary, said that the proposed relocation presents a wise investment for the agency.

“When the borough brought their proposal to us, the KACS board’s first reaction was ‘Wow, this is such a wonderful possibility that we have to pause what we are doing on Cypress Street and do our diligence to investigate their offer,’” Freeman said. “The board was completely behind this idea, and while we had to pause our capital campaign, we had to look at this site, because it is such a perfect location for us. In every way, shape or form, occupying a building that has already been constructed saves us a tremendous amount of money and allows us to move to a new location more quickly.” 

Same square footage, different space

The proposed new KACS offices – which are projected to occupy two-and-a-half floors of Borough Hall and have an entrance on the South Union Street side of the building - will allow the organization to consolidate its entire operation under one roof to include its food cupboard and refrigeration space, social services programs, community education workshops and administrative offices.

Perhaps the most encouraging component of the offer is that KACS would be able to occupy a space calculated to be more than 26,000 square feet, which is about the same square footage that had been designated for the West Cypress Street location. 

As KACS began to seriously consider the borough’s offer, their key concern was whether the agency could make a seamless transition of required space that would be needed to manage its plans for a larger operation. 

“When we talked to the staff [about the design of the West Cypress Street location], we presented them with a clean sheet of paper and told them to design a building that will work for them and carry out the mission of KACS efficiently and effectively,” said Will Majerian, the chairman of KACS’ Building Committee. “That is not lost, because the first thing we did in our due diligence for Broad Street was to bring in our architect (Core States Group) and ask them, ‘For everything we wanted for West Cyress Street, can we take it and drop it into this building?’

“Cypress Street was essentially a square building, one story, 26,000 square feet. Now we’re able to capture the same 26,000 square feet in this new building, but it is set up differently – it’s a narrow, two-and-a-half-story rectangle – so the challenge to the architect was to adapt our needs to the structure. We had a couple of conversations with the architect and the answer we received was, ‘We think we can.’”

The capital campaign for the new facility raised more than $4 million as well as received a few million dollars more in state and federal grants. Once the final negotiation reaches a signed contract, Freeman said that the campaign committee will re-shift its fundraising efforts to help pay for the cost of retrofitting the agency into its new location on South Broad Street. 

“We have spoken with every donor who has given to our capital campaign up to this point and let them know about this potential shift in location,” Freeman said. “I am happy to say that every single one of them has told us that they are in agreement with our plan. They are telling us, ‘We have given you money for a future home for KACS, and wherever that new home is, you have our support.’”

The big pivot

For Majerian and his wife, Lynn – a board member and co-chair of the KACS capital campaign – the refocus from a new facility to an existing one represents a huge shift, one that they said will yield positive outcomes.

“The pivot was determined a lot by circumstances beyond our control,” Will said. “We have land development approval for the Cypress Street location and a nearly completed building design, but we did not get as much money from the State of Pennsylvania as we were expecting.  While I still believe that we would have collected as much money as we needed for that building because it is for a good cause, it was going to take longer. 

“Yet, this pivot is all very positive, from a financial standpoint, from a timing standpoint, and an optical standpoint. What is refreshing for us is that most of the people we have spoken to have told us that it’s not about bricks and mortar, it’s about the mission. It doesn’t matter where we are located, so long as we are still carrying out our mission.”

“People we have spoken with are pleased that it would be more fiscally responsible to move to an existing building, at a cost that is lower and give us the ability be make the move more quickly, to a location that is still in the borough,” Lynn said. “Our hope is that we have a lot of donors already and now we can come back to them and say, ‘We are being so much more fiscally responsible. Can you help us reach our goal?’ 

“We’re still always finding new people and bringing them here for tours, and once people see who we are and what we do, their lightbulb goes off, with the thought being, ‘How much better could we do if we had more space to do it?”

To contact Staff Writer Richard L. Gaw, email [email protected].