NORTH ADAMS — When a committee first gathered to discuss a new community center for Northern Berkshire Community Coalition, Executive Director Amber Besaw found herself trying to host the meeting while accommodating 18 people attending another event in the office that day.

Staff scrambled to pull chairs from every corner of the building to fit everyone — a scene Besaw said underscored the coalition's need for more space.

“I may or may not have done it on purpose to demonstrate to them that this is what it's like here,” she said of the nonprofit's current location on Main Street. “We are out of space.”

Staff members of the nonprofit work in their only large conference room in their second-story space in the Empire Building in downtown North Adams at 61 Main St.

After decades of discussion and five years of planning, the organization's $10 million Community Center Capital Campaign is kicking off at its 40th anniversary celebration on June 18. The campaign will fund the total rebuild of a property that the coalition purchased in 2022 to create a new, larger community space.

"This is a big deal for us,” said Besaw, who has been at Northern Berkshire Community Coalition for 15 years. “We’ve never done a capital campaign before, never done large scale fundraising ... and this kind of asset in North Adams would be community-changing.”

Northern Berkshire Community Coalition is looking to move their offices to 192 State St. in North Adams. The site is on a busy bus route between Goodwill and Noel Field Athletic Complex.

The site at 192 State St. is on a busy bus route between Goodwill and Noel Field Athletic Complex, making it more accessible to residents who rely on the coalition's services.

“We average a lot of walk-ins, which is almost shocking when you think about how hard it is to find our space,” Besaw said of the current Main Street location. “So we also wonder, what else, who else would we be helping or interacting with if we were easier to find?”

Amber Besaw, director of Northern Berkshire Community Coalition, says building a new, larger center for the organization could be "community-changing.”

When the new building is complete, it will be a community gathering space for more than 200 people with a commercial kitchen, significant bike rack space for its Bike Collective, multi-use spaces, staff workspace and meeting rooms, a dedicated youth space and storage.

Plans also include adding outdoor gathering spaces, a walking path and gardens in the backyard of the property.

The expanded facility is designed to support the coalition's role as a hub for services and community programming across Northern Berkshire County. Residents, service providers, media and business owners can come to the nonprofit to learn about local resources. It also runs 150 to 200 programs annually, from fitness challenges to hosting Department of Children and Families visits for families and hosting parenting support groups.

Shaleese Fisher paints a bicycle outside in Courtyard C at Mass MoCA during one of the Northern Berkshire Community Coalition's bike decorating workshop for a future bike share program in the city.

Every day, seniors walk in looking for help getting new transportation cards, workers wander in asking to use the fax machine to get their timecards in and others come to find where to get a free meal or clothes.

“It doesn't matter whether you're a helper or a restaurant owner who has staff with needs, we build relationships across sectors, and so people walk in for all kinds of stuff," Besaw said.

Coalition leaders expect state and federal grants to cover most of the project's cost, but estimate about $3 million will need to come from private donations.

“We’d like to see half of our project [funded] in the next two years,” Besaw said.

After years of dreaming and discussing a building that would suit a future community center, the coalition purchased the former Carr Hardware building after New Hope Church’s plans for the building fell through.

It used $250,000 that former state Sen. Adam Hinds earmarked for the organization.

Northern Berkshire Community Coalition, which has been located in the Empire Building in downtown North Adams at 61 Main St. with only a sandwich board as signage, is looking to move their offices to 192 State St. in North Adams.

Passersby on Main Street may have seen Northern Berkshire Community Coalition's street sign leading up to its 4,000-square-foot office space, but besides that, there is no other signage.

In addition to its almost-hidden location, Besaw said the organization has outgrown the space it has lived in for 17 years. Most offices are doubled up, there is no full kitchen, and spaces for group activity are almost always booked.

Northern Berkshire Community Coalition staff members are crowded into their second-story space in the Empire Building in downtown North Adams at 61 Main St.

“For all of our programming, we try to make it a low- to no-barrier,” she said. “So we provide transportation, food and child care, which in a limited space gets tricky.”

Though the organization provides meals for nearly all of its programs, it typically must purchase pre-prepared food or serve microwavable meals because it lacks a commercial kitchen.

Besaw said the organization spends upward of $20,000 a year renting space for programs it cannot host internally.

Students and their guardians pick out backpacks at the Northern Berkshire Community Coalition's 11th annual back-to-school event in 2023 for Northern Berkshire students at the Terra Nova community space, at 85 Main St. in North Adams.

Leaders and the building committee worked with Merge Architects over the last two years to create the current design for a new 18,000-square-foot, four-floor center on State Street. They also recently hired a development director to oversee the capital campaign.

With more space, the coalition hopes to offer more programming that it can’t right now, including workforce entry programs and expanding its assistant teaching training.

Besaw said the building project was part of the coalition's look to the future as it came out of the pandemic. While many were seeing the negative effects, COVID and the years after have sharpened the importance of community and the coalition’s work to bring people together.

“The idea of creating a literal space to do that work, it felt like now was the time to do that,” she said. “When the opportunity presented itself with the building, it just felt like everything was starting to align."