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Then it will be more than a month before members of the public can access its new home in the former Food Lion in the Summit Pointe shopping center, located at 576 E. Fleming Drive, Â鶹´«Ã½.

BUCM sold its downtown Â鶹´«Ã½ building to Burke County Public Schools for $1.5 million. The school system intends to renovate the building to house the central office.

In the meantime, before BUCM can move into its new space, the nonprofit will still serve its clients, said Alice Horton, executive director of the organization. BUCM provides assistance to those in need through its soup kitchen, food pantry, thrift store and crisis assistance.

“We are going to provide all the services outside of the building,� Horton said.

Horton said BUCM will still serve lunch every week day outside from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at the new location starting Thursday and will have food pantry distributions from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. She said while there won’t be lunch served on weekends, BUCM will give people experiencing homelessness extra food on Fridays to get through the weekend.

While it is challenging to get the new facility up and running, Horton said BUCM still has the mission of meeting the needs of the populations they serve. She said there are many people every day who show up needing food.

“We understand that, and we’re trying to accommodate as much as we can,� Horton said.

The organization’s soup kitchen serves nearly 200 people every day and 50 to 100 people from its pantry, she said.

That doesn’t include people who need a shower, need to wash and dry their clothes, are looking for a house or people who are meeting with a peer.

In the interim, BUCM will not have access to its new building or its current building on West Union, so some staff will work from home, some staff will work on outreach and some staff will use a small rental space, Horton said.

“So minus our daily distribution of meals and/or food pantry food, everybody else, my 30 (member) staff, is going to be displaced in some form or fashion,� Horton said.

Horton said she hopes employees will be in the new 44,000-square-foot building by the end of May and to open to the public in June. The new building offers nearly double the space of its former 23,000-square-foot facility.

The larger facility will have new security systems for coming in and out of the building for the safety of staff and the people working there, Horton said. It also will double the number of showers for clients from two to four, she said. The new building will have big community spaces that the organization hasn’t had in the past. Horton said that will allow space for other nonprofits to reach out to populations BUCM serves.

“BUCM has a recovery community center, and we have several peer supports that work in that space, and they’re going to be able to meet with more people and have more education spaces, and be able to do more classes and do more groups to try to help people make some plans and make some transitions in their lives that they had intended to and maybe need more support to make that happen,� Horton said.

The new space will also have more food storage.

“It will be a really good thing for Burke County, and more people will be able to be served. And that’ll be great,� Horton said.

BUCM has been raising money through a campaign to help pay for the new facility. So far, BUCM has raised about $4 million of its $5 million goal, Horton said.

The purchase of the building was about $2.9 million and the renovation of the building will cost about $3 million, she said.

BUCM plans to celebrate its 50th anniversary in August, Horton said.