Sister Jean's Kitchen to restart hot meals outside Atlantic City Tourism District

ATLANTIC CITY — Damage from Superstorm Sandy and conflict with tourism interests ended Sister Jean’s Kitchen’s longtime mission of serving hot meals to the homeless through a church on Pacific Avenue in 2019.

“We haven’t done congregant feeding since it closed,” said John Scotland, a retired Presbyterian minister who is executive director of Friends of Jean Webster, the nonprofit that continues her work. Webster died in 2011. “By fall we should be doing it again.”

That’s when a new hot meal site will be ready, Scotland said, in the Fellowship Hall of the former St. Monica’s Parish Church at 108 N. Pennsylvania Ave.

Many had long felt the former site, in Victory First Presbyterian Church at Pennsylvania and Pacific avenues a block from the casinos, undermined the resort’s image.

Homeless people lined up on the sidewalk waiting for meals.

“The CRDA (Casino Reinvestment Development Authority) didn’t want us in the Tourism District, and the city didn’t want us in the neighborhoods,” Scotland said.

St. Monica’s is a three-building former church complex a few blocks north on Pennsylvania Avenue from its old location.

But it’s a world away in terms of visibility to tourists.

“They wait in line. Now we have a nice courtyard to wait in,” Scotland said. “They can line up, and people don’t see it.”

Under the fire code, Fellowship Hall can only serve 50 people at a time, Scotland said, so others will have to wait their turn outside, as they did at the old location.

At Victory First, 125 people a day came to meals, he said.

“We used to turn the dining room over three times or four times,” Scotland said.

The city forced Sister Jean’s to close in 2019 because the Victory building was falling apart after being damaged by Superstorm Sandy in 2012.

Most dramatically, the roof was no longer intact.

No one knew it at the time, but the COVID-19 pandemic was about to hit the next year, so there would have been a different temporary ending to providing hot meals in a group setting had the church not been damaged.

The Friends group had already bought St. Monica’s in 2017 for $246,000 as a way to move out of the Tourism District. But it ran into problems for a time when former Mayor Frank Gilliam opposed moving to a location close to homes, a school and the Boys & Girls Club of Atlantic City.

Now, those roadblocks are gone.

The complex includes the church, a community center called Fellowship Hall and the rectory that once housed priests and now provides office space, Scotland said.

He was watching as members of workers with the District Council No. 21 union put an epoxy material over the church floor to prepare it to become the food pantry for the organization, where it can give out free bags of groceries to those in need.

The union did the work as a charitable donation.

“This is saving us $30,000,” Scotland said of the floor preparation, which is required by health rules so food doesn’t fall into cracks and crevices, spawning bacteria. The epoxy makes it impervious to food and water.

Since the pandemic, Sister Jean’s Pantry has given out food provided by the Community FoodBank of New Jersey through a window in Fellowship Hall. It gave away more than 500,000 pounds of food last year.

The pantry will soon move into the church from the Fellowship Hall, freeing up the hall to become the place to serve hot meals, after the kitchen there is renovated.

“We need to install a three-hole sink, replace the cabinets and a whole new hood,” Scotland said. “It will cost $65,000 to $70,000.”

The nonprofit has raised the funds and is ready to move forward, he said.

Also moving to the church will be Sister Jean’s Closet, a place those in need can get donated clothing and soaps.

“You can’t buy soap with food stamps,” Scotland said. “We can’t keep up with demand.”

The long-term plan is to put the kitchen and dining room into the church building, which is the largest and best built of the three, Scotland said. But the building would have to be raised 5 feet to 11.5 feet to meet flood elevation requirements.

“We can’t spend on rehabbing until we raise it,” Scotland said. “That will probably be 10 years from now. We have got to raise $2 million to do that.”

The CRDA had agreed to fund a $1 million renovation of the church building soon after the group bought it, then a contractor said it would cost much more and the funding lapsed. In 2019, the CRDA agreed to reimburse the Friends $300,000 for the cost of the building and environmental studies.

Now, the organization needs to see how many former volunteers are willing to come back, and how many new ones it can attract.

“Sister Jean style is meals are served by volunteers,” Scotland said. Some volunteers plate the food, and others take it to diners who sit at tables.

“Our volunteers have gotten older, and COVID diminished volunteering,” Scotland said. “Most volunteers are older, and they had to be careful with COVID.”

Anyone interested in volunteering can visit the group’s website at friendsofjeanwebster.org for more information.

Webster was a casino chef when she came home from work one day and saw a homeless man digging through garbage searching for food. She fed the man in her own kitchen. From that charitable act came Sister Jean’s Kitchen.

The Friends group now runs the kitchen as well as Sister Jean’s Pantry, Closet and Garden.

One advantage of moving to St. Monica’s is the larger property available. Since moving there, another nonprofit called C.R.O.P.S. (Communities Revolutionizing Open Public Spaces) has begun Sister Jean’s Garden on a sunny side yard there, which grows produce for the community, runs workshops and holds community events.