Photo by Joselyn King Bishop Darrell Cummings shows the future exterior entrance to a childcare center at the North Wheeling Community Dream Center.

WHEELING — The public is welcome next week to the annual Thanksgiving distribution of food items courtesy of the Bethlehem Apostolic Temple at the North Wheeling Community Dream Center — which is also the future site for a proposed child care center.

The yearly event takes place beginning at 11 a.m. Saturday at the Dream Center, located at 334 Main St., Wheeling.

“We’ve got our order in for turkeys, and for pies — pies have gone up (in price),” said Bishop Darrell Cummings. “They’ve almost doubled the price they were when I first started doing this (about 30 years ago).”

In addition, cranberry sauce, stuffing, fruits and vegetables have been ordered.

“Our goal is not to just feed somebody for a day, but for a week,” he explained. “They always say the best part of Thanksgiving is the leftovers.”

Clothing and school supplies also will be available to those attending.

There is no income or residency requirement, though children will need to be present to try on clothes to make certain they fit, Cummings noted.

The giveaway will be taking place again in the basement of the Dream Center, and this permits cars to drive around behind the building to enter the event. That same entry feature also will be useful for the future childcare center, he said.

Construction work is being done by Panhandle Restoration of Wheeling.

When the new childcare area in the building is completed, as many as 35 to 40 children could find a new education home there based on their sizes and ages, Cummings explained.

“We have room to expand if we need it,” he continued. “But Newbridge (Church) is doing theirs downtown, and they’re a lot bigger than us.

“We were just hoping to be a neighborhood daycare, so we’re not any competition to them.”

The building was first constructed in 1928, and Cummings believes the improvements happening are the first in the last half century. Presently, attention is being focussed on just the future childcare area, which consists of one main room with adjacent offices and restrooms.

If there is need for expansion, that can be considered at a later time, according to Cummings.

The front entrance is being widened so that a wheelchair can access the building, and a vestibule has been constructed where visitors will pass through cameras before entering the main room for childcare.

There is new lighting in the room, as well as new sheetrock on the walls.

Initially, there were no plans to redo the office areas in the space, but the placement of new wiring necessitated tearing out their existing walls, Cummings explains.

“We didn’t know the wire ran behind the offices, so we had to tear the offices out to get the wire,” he explained. “Then we had to improve that. One thing leads to another.”

There will be children’s restrooms adjacent to the main room, while adult facilities will be on an upper floor. The front of the building also had to be improved, Cummings continued. When it rained, water would come in and soak the walls.

The Dream Center consists of 35,000 square feet and 35 rooms on four floors.

“It’s come a long way. It’s progress,” Cummings said. “You would love to be able to do the whole building at the same time, but you do what your money will allow.”

The budget to renovate just the space for the childcare center started out at $83,000, but ballooned another $20,000 to $103,000 after unexpected wiring costs.

Cummings estimates $500,000 already has been spent on improving the building as a whole. This includes the installation of a new roof, a new sprinkler and fire alarm system and repairing or replacing furnaces.

“There are six furnaces in the building,” he explained. “We get six gas bills and six electric bills every month.”

Once the contractors are done in the main room and before vinyl flooring is placed, Cummings has plans for some church volunteers to come write biblical scriptures on the floor so that the children there “will always be standing on the word of God.”

“This is just the first phase (of interior projects), “ he said. “Up until now, all we’ve done are exterior and ceiling projects.”

Money generated by the childcare center will go toward building out the remainder of the Dream Center building, and perhaps bringing in other tenants.

“Right now, we have all expenses, and no income,” Cummings said. “And we’re pushing out thousands.”

Still, most of the work completed is that which “you can’t see” and the church still isn’t able to use the space even after owning it for more than six years, he added.

“What I am most happy about is that we still carry out our original mission for what we bought it (the building) for, which is to help people in the giveaway,” Cummings said. “But we wanted to do more.”

Initially, tenants were leasing space in the building, including several incubator businesses and organizations offering housing for homeless veterans. But then the old fire suppression system malfunctioned and sent water through the building, necessitating even greater clean up and improvement of the structure.

“It destroyed everything we were doing,” Cummings explained.

The childcare center should provide the needed income to further improve the building, he continued.

“I think it would be nice if someone would rent this space who already has a daycare, and maybe just wants to enlarge and have a neighborhood center,” Cummings said.

“But if we can’t do that, we’re also looking to hire an executive director to start it. But it would be our preference to just provide the space, and have somebody else run it.”

The building should be ready early next year, according to Cummings.