GUILDERLAND — The Guilderland Food Pantry will move, in July, to a larger home that is closer to the center of town, said Susan Hennessy, who, together with her husband, Mark Hopper, has directed the pantry for five years.

Perhaps most importantly, it will be on the first floor of Christ Church Guilderland, at 4 Charles Blvd., instead of the basement of the Hamilton Union Presbyterian Church, where it has been for 39 years, since its founding, requiring workers to carry donated food up and down stairs.

Hennessy is a parishioner at the nondenominational Christ Church Guilderland.

The pantry’s floor size will double, from 400 square feet to 800, Hennessy said, and tall ceilings will also allow for much more storage.

In the past, pantry workers have packed boxes for clients, but, in the new, larger home, clients will be able to come into the pantry, one at a time, to select their own food. They will be given a shopping cart and be able to select a certain number of items from different food groups as well as paper items.

The amount that people receive is meant to supplement other food sources, Hennessy said.

When it was started by Roberta (“Bertie”) Chesebrough almost 40 years ago, Hennessy said, the pantry was meant to supplement people’s food at the end of the month, when food stamps ran out.

Today, she said, needs continue throughout the month. “There are so many different types of food insecurity now,” Hennessy said, adding that, with cuts in food-stamp programs, more people than before are ineligible to receive food stamps at all. “There are people who pay, say, mortgage and heating bills first, and save food for last, and then have a hard time paying for food,” she said.  

The pantry has expanded from serving about 90 families when Hennessy and Hopper started five years ago, to now serving about 150 families. The organization brought in 30,000 pounds of food last year, she said.

Many of the people who help at the food pantry are aged about 60 or more and will be happy, Hennessy said, not to have to carry food up and down stairs anymore.

Clients need to live in Guilderland, which includes the village of Altamont. Guilderland has a population of 35,303, according to the 2010 federal census. Pantry clients don’t need to show any proof of need, Hennessy said. “If people are there, we figure they need the help.”

The pantry helped launch Guilderland High School’s backpack program that provides students in need with food to eat over the weekends, Hennessy said; it continues to partner with Guilderland Elementary School on its backpack program.

Hennessy learned through word of mouth last year about some students at the University at Albany who lived off campus and couldn’t afford food. This led Christ Church Guilderland to establish a small food pantry specifically for students in the Educational Opportunity Program, a scholarship program, at UAlbany.

This then became the seed of the idea of moving the entire pantry over, Hennessy said. Brian Rutherford, the pastor at Christ Church, thought that, since the church already had a small pantry and was closer to the center of town, it would be a natural place for the move.

The pantry directors had been looking, for years, for a larger home for the pantry.

Hennessy and her husband will, “of course,” continue to direct the pantry, she said. Both are retired teachers: She spent 30 years as an elementary-school teacher, and he taught eighth-grade American history for 32 years, she said.

“I couldn’t just do nothing in retirement,” Hennessy said. “Being teachers, and having such a good pension, we feel it’s important to give back.”