The Healthy Shelby County Nonprofit Center sits on 3 acres of land located on the southside of Shelbyville. It includes a 31,000 square foot facility that will be renovated to provide office and meeting spaces for nonprofit social service organizations; a navigator; indoor and outdoor playscapes for children; showers; raised bed gardens and fruit trees; and a centralized food pantry. The pantry will supply food to the county’s food pantries as well as to the southside of Shelbyville.

The nonprofit center will have significantly more refrigerator and freezer storage capacity than is currently available in the community. The increased storage will allow Shelby County to receive a larger volume of perishable food from Gleaners, especially when a truckload of fresh or frozen foods randomly becomes available. The state-of-the-art training kitchen will be used in a variety of ways to teach nutritious, economical, and sustainable food preparation – even from the center’s garden to the table!

Visitors seeking connection to services will be welcomed by a community navigator who will complete an intake and provide a warm hand-off to an appropriate agency. The entire center will convey life and dignity and focus on building connections in a caring and efficient manner.  The nonprofit center will be an incubator for tenants and community stakeholders to collaborate and innovate solutions for some of the greatest social challenges in Shelby County.

A state-of-the art Alternative Learning Center will serve students with significant behavior challenges from the county’s four school systems and from surrounding counties.  An additional wing will be constructed for the school which will have a dedicated entrance for students.