The Christian Center of Park City had a soft opening last week at both locations in Park City and Heber.
Executive Director of the Christian Center of Park City Rob Harter says the center saw a gradual ramp up of visitors to their two stores in the Wasatch Back, including an increase in receiving of donations and at the food pantry where they served over 1,000 people. The thrift stores themselves are not as busy, partially because they’re limiting capacity inside the store to 20, including staff. Harter says they’re following county guidelines for sanitation.
Every hour we have this protocol where we're cleaning all high-touch surfaces, we’re sanitizing the counter,” Harter said. “We're trying to be as no touch as possible with using your credit card and not having to sign a receipt. We’re actually keeping a log of how often we do that cleaning, but yeah we're just trying to follow the same guidelines that the health department sent out last week.”
The stores are open from 10:00 am to 2:00 pm. Park City is open Monday-Saturday while Heber is open Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.
Harter says they’re still taking volunteers and donations. The Park City Rotary club recently donated 8,000 pounds of food. He shared some of the items they are in particular need of.
“What we’re really lacking right now is diapers of all sizes, feminine hygiene products, and then meat has been the thing that the grocery stores don't have a lot of,” Harter explained. “Now granted I realize that meat seems to be kind of low across the board, but if you do have the ability to give some meat, chicken beef, whatever you have, that seems to be what we’re missing the most. At the same time, a lot of people just want to give out canned goods, and that's great too. When we’re handing out food to people, they're just thankful for the food.”
The Christian Center also offers counseling. Harter says their counselors are very busy, but he encourages residents in need to use their services.
“Pick up the phone, we've got two free sessions with our counselors right now through June 1st if you just need to talk to somebody,” Harter continued. “Even if you don't feel like you're having extreme anxiety or depression but just things are not right, you're not feeling right, we encourage people to call one of our counselors. It's ironic that this month is mental health awareness month, right? Let’s remove the stigma of getting help with mental health issues because there shouldn’t be any stigma with it. Everybody needs it at time and so we just encourage people to call in.”
More information about the Christian Center and their services can be found here.
