SAFETY HARBOR, Fla. — The Mattie Williams Neighborhood Family Center has received $1.4 million from Pinellas County and the city of Safety Harbor for a much needed expansion project, according to executive director David Hale.

What You Need To Know

  • Pinellas County and Safety Harbor donated $1.4M for center expansion  

  • Mattie Williams Center needs extra space for food pantry 

  • The need for food more than doubled during the pandemic   

  • The project is expected to be complete by late summer

“We are so grateful to Pinellas County. They are the largest funder of this project at nearly $1 million,” he said. “This project would not have happened without Janet Hooper. This is her will and vision.”

Janet Hooper, 73, has been with the center for 16 years and was its longest serving executive director. Hooper volunteered to chair the committee for expansion and said it was her vision two years ago to see the project happen before she retired.

“I’m ecstatic. I can’t even tell you,” she said. “I almost cried when the county came through with extra funding.”

Hooper said during the pandemic the need for food more than doubled from 10,000 to 23,000 people, and that number has not come down. Storing all of that extra food in the small facility at 1003 Martin Luther King Jr. St. N. has become overwhelming, according to Hooper.

“It’s an incredible amount of food that you process through,” she said. “Everybody’s office wasn’t an office anymore. It became this storage area.”

The 27-year-old center, which has been at its current location since 2000, added a big storage shed to the property during the pandemic but it too filled up quickly, according to Hooper.

“By the time it was built it was already obsolete, so to speak,” she said. “We needed even more space.”

County and city leaders gathered at the Mattie Williams Center on Feb. 28 for a groundbreaking ceremony. The project is expected to be complete by late summer and will add 1,545 square-feet of new building, which includes a multi-purpose room that can hold more than 100 people.

“We are going to make sure this facility grows for the folks who are depending on us,” said Hale. “You can see where our current reception area becomes a much nicer welcome area for folks.”

The center serves Safety Harbor, Oldsmar and eastern Clearwater. Last year, the center delivered 77,000 pounds of food to approximately 7,660 households where 7,400 kids live. The center also provides family services and utility assistance.

“We are the lifeline for a lot of people in the community,” said Hooper. “We’re about feeding people, we’re about trying to give people an opportunity and give them hope.”