Grey Bears plans major warehouse expansion to meet growing demand for senior services

The long, weathered building on the Grey Bears’ compound on Chanticleer Avenue has served the nonprofit organization for more than 50 years. It’s where volunteers pack bags of groceries to deliver to seniors across the county, the site of a free food market, and a daily hot lunch program that serves up to 300 people a day. 

But Grey Bears’ has outgrown the aging facilities, originally built as a chicken coop more than a century ago. The market doesn’t have permanent infrastructure; it’s held behind the building under awnings. The commercial kitchen is cramped, with a short five-foot-long hot food service window. Volunteers set up cold items like salads and desserts on separate folding tables, so guests have to wait in two lines to get a complete meal. 

Vital equipment on the site also needs to be updated. The walk-in refrigerators are so old that replacement parts are no longer available, said healthy food program director Danielle Wong. For the past few years, they’ve relied on a volunteer in his 80s, a former Merchant Marine who repaired refrigerators on ships, to keep them running. 

That’s all about to change. By 2028, Grey Bears will move all of these services, plus an office that’s also in a deteriorating farm building, into a much larger warehouse right next door. 

“We’re bursting at the seams,” said executive director Jennifer Merchant. “This is an opportunity for us to create a home where we can live for the next 50-plus years.” The new building will be named the Kristina Maillard Building for Healthy Seniors, after Grey Bears’ founder. 

Grey Bears purchased the two-story warehouse, located next to the existing thrift store and recycling center, in 2024 for $4 million and moved their main office into a small portion of the building. Over the next two years, organizers plan to renovate the rest of the warehouse into a commercial kitchen, dining area, and indoor market, with ample refrigeration, ADA-compliant bathrooms and storage. 

“We’re taking what we’re currently operating today, placing it over here, upsizing it to fit our existing operations and putting it all under one roof,” Merchant said. Plans show a commercial kitchen that’s twice the size of the existing one, with a 24-foot-long foot pick-up line for both hot and cold lunch items. 

A large walk-in refrigerator will allow volunteers and visitors to easily store and shop for grocery items like meat and dairy, with room for forklifts. 

The market will move inside, with an area designed like a neighborhood store – a significant upgrade from the current system of boxes stuffed with donated items.

“[Vistors] will be able to come inside and have a more dignified shopping experience, kind of like they’re going to the corner grocery store,” Merchant said. Grey Bears also hopes to extend the market’s hours of 30 minutes a day, although that plan hasn’t yet been decided. 

The dining area and grocery bag packing site will be a similar size, but the team is hoping to add a divider that can be raised and lowered to create a smaller, more intimate space for events like the Valentine’s Day senior speed-dating mixer. 

The facility won’t just be more attractive and functional; it will be safer, Wong  said. 

“Right now there’s this huge hazard of forklifts, pedestrians, trucks and older folks who can’t hear necessarily,” she said. The new plan separates pedestrians from vehicles and machinery. 

The organization is well underway to reaching their funding goal of $9.6 million, with 81% already raised through private donations. In addition to the purchase of the building for $4 million, construction is anticipated to cost $5.6 million, including about $500,000 for “soft costs” like design and administrative fees. 

As of early April, the organization has raised $4.163 million from individual donors, said development director Kayla Traber. One of the largest donations came from a $500,000 challenge grant from 1440 Multiversity, a learning center and resort in Scotts Valley. All of the funds for the project are locally sourced, without the addition of federal or state funding. The only government support the project has received is a $5,000 grant from the city of Scotts Valley, she said. 

On Sunday, Grey Bears opened donations to the wider community to fundraise for the rest of the project. They added a campaign page on the nonprofit’s website, and hold tours twice a week to show anyone who is interested more about the organization. 

“This is a really well-positioned opportunity to support our local community in ways that are really impactful and really matter right now,” Traber said. “In a time where seniors are especially at risk due to their fixed incomes and are especially vulnerable to rising costs of living and potential loss of benefits, this project is more important than ever.”

The expansion comes at a critical time for seniors and food insecure residents. In 2025, federal spending cuts gutted food security programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and permanently halted large monthly deliveries of food from the US Department of Agriculture to food banks. Santa Cruz County also has the fastest growing population of seniors in the state, a population that is sensitive to economic shifts due to often relying on fixed incomes. 

Demands for Grey Bears’ services also have increased. The organization delivers 4,200 bags of groceries to residents aged 55 and older across the county every week. Attendance at its daily markets, which are open to anyone, have also jumped. The daily free hot lunch program saw the biggest increase. Before the pandemic, it served between 20 to 40 volunteers. Since it opened the program to everyone in 2023, a cross-generational crowd of 150 to 200 shows up daily, and as many as 300 people on Friday, its busiest day. 

The nonprofit hopes the county will approve the building permit by this summer, and aim to break ground by September. Construction will take 12 to 14 months, and it’s scheduled to fully open by 2028. Because it’s right next door, there won’t be a disruption to services. 

“When 2028 rolls around, we’ll just say, tomorrow we’ll be over next door,” Wong said. “It’ll be a nice soft launch.”

What will happen to the old chicken coop, the site of so many brown bags of groceries, hot lunches and connections? Merchant, Wong and Traber aren’t sure yet. It could be rented out or repurposed for another use. 

They’re also considering tearing it down to create room for another critical resource. Said Merchant: “We could really use some parking.”