‘Uniting Our Community’ Depends on You
What unites people into a community? How about celebrating our culture together. Or sharing the pastimes that make us smile. What about attending to each other’s health?
Surely, breaking bread together transforms friends into family and even strangers into neighbors. All of that takes place at a 100-year old former middle school annex that found new life in 2008 as the PEACE Center, a true community gathering place. By “Uniting Our Community with Love,” we will be able to:
- Honor this building’s past service
- Improve it for meeting today’s needs
- Preserve it for the community of tomorrow
We have defined PEACE Center priorities in three areas:
Hospitality & Accessibility
Handicapped-accessible needs, energy efficient, and aesthetic upgrades, and a refinished parking lot
Community-Friendly
Remodeling youth rooms and fixing water-damaged floors
Sustainability
Maintaining exterior infrastructure, upgrading interior plumbing and completing the rain garden
We enjoy everything from folkloric dancing to pickleball, from health programs to feeding ministries, because this building was rescued and returned to community use. Now it’s our turn to address the needs — many of them urgent — that will ensure the PEACE Center continues to unite our community for years to come.
Success depends on not a few — but all of us — ensuring these vital, enriching programs continue to have a place to call home. Now is the time to unite as a community behind the PEACE Center Campaign.
PEACE CENTER IMPROVEMENTS
Remodeling the 100-year-old PEACE center will make it a safe and welcoming place for our church and community partners with improved, handicapped-accessible spaces for meetings and events.
Providing space for feeding ministries and other groups puts our faith in action and facilitates our mission of “Welcoming all and living the love of God and neighbor.” Improving the physical plant will allow community groups to use the center safely and easily for fellowship, fun, and community building.
Improving meeting spaces, parking and the gym will encourage others to use the center as a safe, affordable gathering place. We hope to maintain the building as a community resource while reducing our electric usage through the installation of solar panels.
“The Peace Center has great meaning for use since this is a place in which each of us who are there has made it a refuge, a place where we feel that we belong, a place where our children can come and feel welcome. They will be welcomed with open arms”
Maria Rubalcava
Raíces de mi Pueblo Mexican Folkloric Dance Troupe
Center Impact
The PEACE Center currently host events, meetings and more for the following community groups:
- United Harvest Mobile Food Pantry
- Hearts and Hands Against Hunger
- Hastings Community Food Pantry
- Raíces di Mi Pueblo Mexican Folkloric Dance Troupe
- South Heartland District Health Department
- Central Community College
- Hastings Public Schools Summer Band
- Hastings Pickleball League
- United Way of Central Nebraska
- First Presbyterian Church of Hastings – Christian Education
- Quilters Club
- Seniors Walking Club
PEACE CENTER PROJECTS
| Hospitality & Accessibility | |
|---|---|
| Remodel classrooms and bathrooms for handicapped accessibility and community use |
$60,000 |
| New doors, windows, signage, and repaint hallways and ceiling to make the space more energy efficient |
$150,000 |
| Include new exterior entrance and vestibules for community use | $40,000 |
| Complete parking lot project* | $425,000 |
| Community-Friendly | |
|---|---|
| Remodel High School Youth Room (new carpet, paint, furniture) | $20,000 |
| Fix water damaged gym floor | $150,000 |
| Long-Term Sustainability | |
|---|---|
| Plumbing project* | $50,000 |
| Capstone sealing, shingles, and brick tuckpointing | $50,000 |
| Add solar panels for electricity generation (after rebates) | $60,000 |
| Rain garden* | $20,000 |
*Projects already started with reserve funds
†Includes 5% contingency for all projects for an additional $50,000
In addition to the new projects, we hope to reimburse the reserve monies used to pave the PEACE Center parking lot, which was started in 2022 and is near completion.
†TOTAL $1,000,000
Overall Refresh
- Replace the doors with new energy efficient doors that also allow more light in
- Replace windows with energy efficient and larger windows to allow for more light
- Repaint the hallways and ceilings to refresh them and make them more hospitable to all users of the building
Accessible Bathroom(s)
- Remodel the bathrooms on the east-side of the building to refresh them and make them handicapped accessible
Solar Panels
- Install solar panels on the Peace Center Roof
- New solar array will cover 90% of the total electricity use in the building helping to keep rental fees low
- Provides cost savings and environmental stewardship
Accessible Entrances
- Add handicapped accessible exterior entrances for the northeast and central east classrooms with keypad entry for each use
Peace Pantry: What can we say? We look forward to every 2nd & 4th Thursday of the month. We not only have food to enjoy, we have the kind, gracious volunteers also. We are blessed
– Brian & Laura, food pantry patrons
Remodel Classrooms
- Classrooms will get paint, new floor coverings, and new furniture that can be easily set up for various user-friendly configurations
- Entrances will become handicapped accessible for our various community groups and non-profits
Remodel High School Youth Room
- Put in new large windows to make it brighter
- Replace the carpet
- New paint and new furniture to make the youth room inviting and exciting for our youth ministries
Fix Gym Floor
- Replace a section of the damaged gym floor and have the whole floor refinished so that it can be more effectively used as a community resource for recreation, youth groups, Boy Scouts, basketball, and pickleball
Give Online
Make your donation online at https://fpchastings.org/give-online. Please include “PEACE Center” in the comment box during the payment process