Camden Gets A Sprawling New Hub for Hope (and Hugs)

Camden's latest Salvation Army Community Center will bring a full range of programs and recreational activities to the city.

Bank On It: Camden is counting on the Salvation Army's new Kroc Center to spur local redevelopment.
Photo by AC Photo

Salvation Army major Paul Cain recently was standing outside the organization’s new 120,000-square-foot building on its 24-acre complex in Camden, when a woman slammed on her brakes, ran from her car and gave him a hug. “She lives across the street and has been watching our construction for years,” says Cain.

With this month’s ribbon cutting, the neighbor and the roughly 10,000 other Camden residents who live within a 15-minute walk of the sprawling, low-slung building, will finally get to see what the fuss is about. They’ll discover two sparkling indoor pools and a water slide, a 30-foot rock-climbing wall and a college-worthy basketball court. They’ll be shown meeting spaces, a technology center and a theater. And they’ll be introduced to ramped-up social services such as a food pantry (where clients select their own provisions) and a state-of-the-art day-care facility. Best of all, they’ll learn they can avail themselves of it all for $25 per household of four per month.

The $90 million Salvation Army Ray and Joan Kroc Corps Community Center is the 26th (and final) facility in a nationwide project that has drawn on the $1.6 billion that Joan Kroc—widow of McDonalds’ founder Ray Kroc—bequeathed to the Salvation Army for the creation of these ambitious community centers.

The centers are a far cry from the old prayer-and-a-meal model. “Formerly, we operated out of a 14,000-square-foot space with a staff of a dozen,” Cain says. “Now, we can provide a full range of programs in one place as well as address a need in the community for recreational and social resources.”

The center—located on the site of a long-abandoned municipal waste dump—will anchor the city’s redevelopment plan for Cramer Hill, a low-income, mostly Hispanic neighborhood that stretches along the Delaware River two miles northeast of downtown. Besides bringing hundreds of temporary construction jobs to a city where the unemployment rate hovers near 20 percent, says Cain, the center expects to employ about 160 adjunct, full- and part-time workers.

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