When the Prineville Senior Heart lunch menu comes out each month, seniors within the space discover and mark the dates. Each day crowds may be as massive as 50 folks.
For over 40 years, lunch has been served Monday via Friday, and it’s at all times totally different. Seniors get a salad, a foremost dish, sides, dessert and a beverage, which is served to them like a restaurant. If they will’t pay the $5 prompt donation, “We feed them anyway,” mentioned Karen Rabenberg, who serves as president of the board that runs this system.
The Senior Heart’s funding comes from a number of sources however is essentially depending on Neat Repeat, Prineville’s hub for secondhand garments, sneakers, homewares, books, equipment, artwork and {hardware}.
Karen Rabenberg, who grew up in Prineville, returned when she retired to run the Senior Heart.
“Financially, we do what we will do. With out Neat Repeat, we’d have been out of enterprise a very long time in the past,” Karen mentioned.
Neat Repeat takes up the complete Morse constructing in Prineville, a 70-year-old constructing.
Two buildings, one mission.
The Senior Heart occupies a constructing that was a bowling alley within the Nineteen Sixties and 70s and acquired an in depth transform with a federal neighborhood block grant in 2020.
The Senior Heart behind Neat Repeat is funded partially by the gross sales from Neat Repeat.
Neat Repeat is housed within the Morse Constructing, a 70-year-old construction that has housed a publish workplace, furnishings retailer, county workplace, youth heart, accounting workplace, magnificence store, and who-knows-what else earlier than changing into Prineville’s resale hotspot.
Neat Repeat is without doubt one of the hottest locations in Prineville. Consumers come from throughout.
Collectively these buildings occupy nearly a complete metropolis block on this former timber city.
The Morse constructing wants an extended checklist of updates, and this native non-profit struggles to fund them. Their precedence is feeding and serving seniors, so points like flooding and dangerous lighting get placed on the again burner.
A no-cost lighting improve from Vitality Belief of Oregon.
Karen first heard about Vitality Belief and the no-cost lighting supply at a Chamber of Commerce assembly she watched on Fb.
A consultant from Vitality Belief was there to debate a program to improve the lighting for certified companies and talked about that it was for gratis to the client.
Karen Rabenberg and Peg McCutchen stand within the racks of clothes offered on the thrift retailer.
“I went, oh my gosh, I’ve acquired to get in on this for Neat Repeat,” Karen mentioned.
Karen acquired on the cellphone and acquired all the knowledge she wanted. After emailing backwards and forwards, a consultant from Vitality Belief got here out, appeared on the house and mentioned it was a go to vary out the lighting.
Over 8,000 sq. toes, Neat Repeat sells simply the whole lot however home equipment and electronics.
The mission concerned changing outdated fluorescent tubes to LEDs, and there are a variety of them within the 8,000 sq ft house. Eleven rows of as much as 20 lighting fixtures illuminate the principle a part of the constructing, which lately had its wiring up to date.
The Enterprise Lighting commerce ally and direct installer from the Valley drove in and accomplished the mission in two days.
Neat Repeat didn’t even must shut down.
“We acquired on their schedule, and so they got here in and put in the brand new lights,” Karen mentioned. “It was great for us. Anytime a nonprofit can discover somebody to maintain a necessity like that— the lighting was historical.
“And altering the tubes? You noticed how excessive the ceilings are. LEDs have a 20-year lifespan or one thing like that. It was a godsend.”
Visibly higher
“It actually made a distinction,” mentioned Peg McCutchen, who manages Neat Repeat. “It makes it extra nice to stroll in and have the ability to see. What an enchancment.”
Supervisor Peg McCutchen, 85, has labored at Neat Repeat for practically 20 years.
“Like night time and day,” Beverly Grey mentioned with a smile from behind the counter. “Who would have thought that enhancing the sight of issues can enhance the sale of issues?”
Neat Repeat employee Beverly Grey helps ring up Brian Martell, who was touring via.
“It’s good to see!” Karen repeated with amusing, including “To have the ability to do one thing so expensive for a no-cash outlay. It’s simply right here, take pleasure in it, that’s fairly wonderful.”
Ultimately, Vitality Belief’s no-cost lighting supply has made Neat and Repeat, and Prineville, shine somewhat brighter.
To this point, Vitality Belief has accomplished greater than 1,600 no-cost lighting installations at native companies throughout the state, contributing to vital vitality financial savings.
See in case you qualify for an improve.
Questions? Give us a name at 1.800.326.2917 or ship us an e mail at lighting@energytrust.org. Interpretation companies can be found for gratis for non-English audio system.
