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Second Harvest no longer a part of Skip’s Cafe project
By Kalea Hall
YOUNGSTOWN
Second Harvest Food Bank and a donor are no longer working together to open another feeding site in Youngstown.
Michael Iberis, Second Harvest executive director, on Thursday told The Vindicator that the donor has decided to complete and operate the soup kitchen, Skip’s Cafe, at 551 Mahoning Ave., without Second Harvest.
Plans for Skip’s Cafe, which were submitted by Boardman-based Cocca Development Ltd. to Youngstown’s Design Review Committee, were approved in early February.
At the time, Brice Jackson, project manager for Cocca Development, said work on the project would start in the spring and it would take three to four months to complete the construction. A 16,000-square-foot, long-vacant warehouse structure at the 1-acre site was demolished earlier this year.
The new soup kitchen will be built on land owned by the Anthony Cocca Family Foundation.
In December, Second Harvest announced its plans to open the kitchen after $750,000 was pledged to it from the Cocca family, initially an anonymous donor. The $750,000 would be used to build, equip and maintain the kitchen. A 6,560-square-foot food pantry would serve lunch daily.
The Anthony Cocca Family Foundation, however, established a no-cost lease arrangement for Second Harvest. Iberis’ understanding had been that the food bank would own and run the kitchen. Second Harvest provides food to 148 organizations in the Mahoning Valley’s tri-county region.
Second Harvest received $600,000 of the $750,000, Iberis said, and intends to use it to feed the hungry.
The nonprofit food bank recently was informed that Cocca would open the kitchen on its own. The separation is because of the practices and guidelines required by Second Harvest and Feeding America, a nonprofit organization with a network of more than 200 food banks in the U.S.
Iberis said Cocca believes the Second Harvest and Feeding America guidelines are too rigid.
“We wish them well in the venture to have a food kitchen,” Iberis said.
Anthony Cocca, president and chief executive officer of the real-estate development and management team, preferred not to comment. But he told The Vindicator by email that maybe he would comment in a couple of weeks.
Skip Barone, former kitchen manager of St. Vincent de Paul Society’s kitchen on Front Street, is to be the manager of the new soup kitchen. Barone did not wish to comment for this story.
Barone resigned from St. Vincent de Paul in late November after 13 years at the kitchen. After his resignation, distraught volunteers upset with the leadership at the kitchen followed Barone. The kitchen was closed for one week until a new manager and an anonymous donor came forward to help feed hungry people who could not get a meal at the shuttered kitchen.
Not too long after, Second Harvest announced the plans for Skip’s Cafe.