Officials with the businesses held a groundbreaking ceremony Tuesday morning to celebrate an upcoming $3.8 million expansion project at their 731 Mount Clinton Pike location.

Deb King, general manager of Harrisonburg — which includes Booksavers and neighboring fair-trade retailer Artisans’ Hope under its umbrella — said the project should add about 8,000 square feet of space to the approximately 19,000-square-foot former Ray Carr Tire building. [Read more about Debra Glick King ’77, MBA ’12, and the charitable businesses she manages in this 2014 .]

Much of the existing structure will be renovated, too, she added.

When the project’s completed, King said the building should have approximately 4,000 square feet of additional retail space for Gift & Thrift’s clothing and furniture inventory, more shelves and seating for Booksavers, and perhaps even a small coffee bar.

“We really have high hopes,” she said.

Employees and volunteers also will have more space to process furniture, which might lead to more availability on the floor, as well as an improved breakroom. Work on the project, designed by Blue Ridge Architects and to be built by Lantz Construction, is expected to begin once final permits have been received, King said.

Construction is expected to last a year. The building likely won’t need to close during the project, but its retail space probably will be condensed at times.

Harrisonburg Gift & Thrift Shop Inc. owns its building and the neighboring structure that houses Artisans’ Hope, A Bowl of Good, Everence Federal Credit Union, a Mennonite Central Committee office and a community room groups can rent. When it bought the Ray Carr Tire building in 2003, King said, the company paid off the note in 2½ years via a fundraising effort and profits.

The neighboring building, which opened in 2009, should be paid off by the end of next year from rent and a portion of sales revenue. Gift & Thrift alone fell about $1,000 short of $1 million in sales last year, King said. The combined revenue from the three businesses and rent collected from tenants, she said, has allowed the organization to net about $600,000 each of the last three to four years.

Half that money has been used to pay down building debt, with the rest provided to MCC in support of its global relief efforts. Gift & Thrift bales and sells in bulk some clothing it doesn’t have room to display or can’t sell, she said. The expansion will allow more of that inventory to hit the floor, perhaps with more bargain sales.

“We’re trying to figure out a way to bale less clothing,” King said. “We only get 6 cents a pound for baled clothing.” The three businesses have 11 full- and 12 part-time employees and about 250 people who regularly volunteer.

Editor’s note: The  also called “restorative justice on two wheels,” was started by King and Ben Bailey ’12, along with several other EMU alumni and community members, and is also housed at Gift & Thrift.

Reprinted with permission from the Daily News-Record, March 16, 2016.

You’ll find this magical re-tooled space in the administrative offices of , a Harrisonburg thrift store whose proceeds support the Mennonite Central Committee (MCC).

The (L)earn-a-Bike program was founded this past year by a contingent of ��ݮ���� alumni and campus community members as an alternative means for juvenile offenders to serve court-appointed community service hours.

’12, who co-founded the program with Gift & Thrift manager Deb King ‘77, describes its simple, but powerful premise: The teenagers—most are middle- and high-school-aged—are given a used, donated bicycle. They then strip all tparts from its frame and put them in a basket. In two-hour increments over the next eight weeks, under the guidance of an instructor, the kids service the parts and rebuild the bicycle, which they are allowed to keep once they have completed the course.

Yes, it might seem simple, but in the steps of rebuilding a bicycle arise opportunities for challenge, frustration and collaboration – the process nurtures personal growth.

“The kids that come through our program are often those who haven’t found success in the traditional classroom setting,” said Bailey.

He sees (L)earn-a-Bike as a safe space where participants can explore different kinds of learning, build self-confidence and experience the mentorship of positive role-modeling.

“This is a place where whoever comes can step into positivity,” said Bailey.

And then there is the work itself. Tom Brenneman ‘92 was working as an early intervention officer with the Rockingham County courts when he began the conversation about a bicycle-related community service program based on his experience with similar programs, such as the Zuni Avenue Bike Club in Tucson, Arizona. Brenneman thinks there is a tremendous amount of healing to be found in such tangible, hands-on work.

The program is young; the first participant began coursework in May 2015 and graduated in June. With 22 teenagers already having completed the program since then, and plans of having engaged 40 youth by June 2016, the community impacts could be significant.

“Wrenches, grease, gears and a spirit of welcome,” Brenneman said when describing the program. “It’s like Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance for kids.” [For those who aren’t familiar with this influential work of philosophy, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, published in 1974 by Robert M. Pirsig, explores, through a father-son trip on a temperamental motorcycle, the themes of work, values and the analytic/creative ways of thinking.)

Riding together

Gift & Thrift may not seem like the obvious place for a program like (L)earn-a-Bike to set up shop, but King, who oversees all the charitable operations housed in the Park View shopping center close to the EMU campus, sees (L)earn-a-Bike slotting neatly into the non-profit’s mission. The thrift store has a long history of hosting young people and adults looking for a place to complete court-mandated volunteer hours.

“We had been having conversations among ourselves and with people in the community regarding how to better utilize what we have going here,” said King. “We know that we offer informal mentoring and training when volunteers come to work for us. But what would it look like if we were to formalize that experience, gear it toward a specific segment of the population, and focus on a tangible skill set, all the while offering a safe setting where healthy relationships are nurtured?”

With that vision, (L)earn-a-Bike has partnered with the Department of Juvenile Justice (DJJ) through the Virginia Juvenile Community Crime Control Act (VJCCCA), a grant-funded program aimed at stemming the tide of youth falling into the juvenile detention system through a focus on community service- based sentencing. Celeste Williams, who oversees the VJCCCA in Harrisonburg, said the excitement about such programs is palpable.

“Kids who went through this program reported having learned more about themselves, and felt more proud of themselves than those who filled more traditional community service roles,” she said, adding that the potential for programs such as (L)earn-a-Bike is exponential. “We don’t need much money to start programs like this. We just need a few excited people.”

EMU has been a source of several of those people. Bailey,  the office coordinator for the department, is an active cyclist and advisor to the EMU . Eric Saner, husband of professor , serves as an instructor (community member Matt Hassman also instructs). The program’s advisory team is comprised of Bailey, King, Brenneman, student Matt Swartzendruber, Nathan Zook Barge ‘84, MA (conflict transformation) ’99, and professor of Bible and religion ’92.

Contributions helpful

The group continues to explore funding options. While (L)earn-a-Bike receives funding from the DJJ for each participant who completes the course, the amount remains inadequate to provide quality programming, so charitable contributions currently bridge the budgetary gap. , the Voluntary Gas Tax, and local individuals have thus far made donations. [Information about how to contribute is at the end of this article.]

Other non-monetary contributions have been just as valuable to the program’s success. Local business has donated a wide range of quality bike parts they weren’t able to sell through their EBay site. The City of Harrisonburg provided a grant to purchase tools, and will soon be delivering a donated barn.

“Storing our inventory has been a problem,” said Bailey, “so we’re really looking forward to having space outside of our workshop.”

The goal, Bailey notes, is to create a program that sustains itself through services provided the community—like bicycle classes offered to the public. So eventually the best way to support (L)earn-a-Bike will be by enrolling in a class.

Pedaling forward

Bailey says the program is gaining traction in the community and local courts, with several teens who had stolen bicycles being appointed directly to (L)earn-a-Bike by the judge overseeing their cases. But he envisions the program as more than a place to fulfill community service requirements.

“I won’t be satisfied until we have a space that’s open to everyone,” he said, citing an increasing interest and demand for affordable bicycles throughout the area.

King agrees. “We see this program ultimately as a destination for getting people together to be a community together,” she said. “By leveraging the non-profit service model that Gift & Thrift provides, we hope to be able to meet tangible goods and service needs in a way that’s accessible to people on the margins.”

For the moment, though, Bailey and King are focused on building a creative and compelling alternative for court-appointed volunteers, one in which the hard work of self-reflection and tangible reward of a job well-done go hand in hand. As Brenneman noted, “That’s a good start to restorative justice on two wheels.”

To contribute

Contact Deb King at 540-746-8547, ext. 103, or mail checks made out to Gift & Thrift with “(L)earn a Bike program” in the memo line.