Waveney Ann Moore: Campbell Park’s vital resource center

It began with a walking school bus, an idea that saw Campbell Park Elementary parents and even volunteers from the Tampa Bay Rays organization accompanying groups of students on foot to the school near the baseball stadium. 

It was one of the first steps toward creating what is now the United Way Suncoast Campbell Park Neighborhood Resource Center, an oasis of services including after-school care, job training and referrals, a food pantry, financial assistance, legal help, and most recently, a health care clinic.  

“The focus is on accessible services for people who live in and around the community, a place where they can get all of their needs met. A one-stop shop,” is the way Emery Ivery, United Way Suncoast’s chief impact officer, describes it. 

Housed in its own two-story building at the back of the John Hopkins Middle School campus, the center serves the John Hopkins and Campbell Park Elementary School communities and their modest neighborhoods. 

Those behind the resources available at the center are proud of the collaboration that brought them about. It was cause for celebration at an open house Thursday that drew such organizations as Evara Health, the Pinellas County School District, Feeding Tampa Bay and the Rays. 

“This neighborhood is something that is near and dear to us,” said David Egles, executive director of the Rays and Rowdies Foundation. “Not only is it in our backyard, it is where our employees live, it is where their children go to school. It’s where our volunteers come.” 

The Campbell Park center and two others, in Sulphur Springs and North Greenwood in Clearwater, owe their genesis to a business model United Way Suncoast adopted in 2006. The nonprofit was challenged to do more “to try to address some of the root causes of community issues,” Ivery said. 

One of the best ways to do so, it decided, “was to target certain neighborhoods that were in need of services based on poverty rates, based on school grades and a number of other factors.” 

As Ivery recalled, in 2010, then Rays executive Mark Fernandez, also a United Way Suncoast board member at the time, mentioned that the baseball organization was interested in working with United Way Suncoast to help the neighborhoods around it. United Way worked with Fernandez and Rays president Brian Auld to identify a precise community.  

“We ended up in Campbell Park and talking with a school representative and neighbors and teachers, community leaders and nonprofits,” Ivery said, adding that they met for about six months. 

United Way Suncoast leaders also met with the Rays to share what they had learned and began to build a strategy to boost the community. They did not deny the area’s challenges, Ivery said, but focused on identifying its assets to build on its strengths. 

Residents were proud of Campbell Park Elementary School, “but really wanted their kids to perform better and to be successful,” he said. And United Way Suncoast “wanted to support the neighborhood’s vision for the school, for the kids and for the neighborhood.” 

It was one of the reasons for the walking school bus. Campbell Park Elementary had been struggling with tardiness and absenteeism, so the nonprofit and the Rays teamed up to launch the program, patterning it on a model in place in other communities. They recruited parents as volunteers. The Rays provided souvenirs and even sent their mascot on occasion. 

“At one point, we had about 15 volunteers on seven routes and 146 kids participating,” Ivery said. “They would meet at a certain location and we would have snacks for them.” 

The program ran for several years, but lost some parent volunteers as they found jobs. Plans to restart it stalled because of the pandemic. But there was more to buttressing Campbell Park Elementary. United Way Suncoast worked with the Rays and the school to establish an after-school program that included tutoring at the stadium. 

The new resource center opened in 2011. The Rays funded a full-time staff person for the center that was initially based at Campbell Park Elementary. A number of agencies signed on. 

The program outgrew that space and moved to a nearby modular building owned by the city of St. Petersburg. A grant from Suncoast Credit Union funded the move. In 2017, a $1 million grant from Duke Energy that spanned three years provided another boost, allowing the center to embrace more partners and expand its services.  

These days Bay Area Legal Services provides free legal advice, the Pinellas County Urban League offers career readiness, and PEMHS, Personal Enrichment Through Mental Health Services, offers case management that includes emergency financial assistance for rent and utilities.  

There’s also the Shirley Proctor Puller Foundation M.A.S.T.R. Kids after-school program. United Way Suncoast’s Campbell Park Network for Early Learning offers onsite learning and play experiences for families and their young children – from birth to 5 years old – along with technical support to home and private childcare centers. The goal is to transform the lives of preschoolers and their families by improving readiness for kindergarten. 

This fall, a grant from Bayfront Health will allow the center to offer CNA classes. “We help to pay the tuition. We help them to pay the exam fees,” Ivery said of training that’s also being offered at the other centers. “It’s done in an environment that’s very supportive.” 

The training programs, he added, have a 90 percent completion rate. 

Continuing growth called for additional space and a move in August 2019 to the John Hopkins campus. Dr. Jeffery Johnson, the center’s director of support services, marvels at how its resources and physical space have expanded over the years.

“When I started, we were in a three-room trailer with roughly 800 square feet or less. Now, we have nearly 15,000 square feet,” he said.  

The School District has been a “phenomenal partner,” he added. “It’s because of their generosity that we’re able to do what we do.”  

United Way Suncoast pays only for utilities and cleaning at the School District’s building, Ivery said. 

The Evara Health clinic is the newest addition at the center, opening just recently. “We have been working on getting things going there for a while,” chief medical officer Dr. Nichelle Threadgill said during a telephone interview. “What we understand is people want to have services and healthcare included. Being able to be in the community makes all the difference.” 

Evara Health, formerly Community Health Centers of Pinellas, operates other healthcare clinics nearby, the Johnnie Ruth Clark Center on 22nd Street S and Bayfront on Sixth Street S. The Campbell Park location, though, offers important convenience for the neighborhood’s schools, their students and staff and for residents, many of whom may struggle with transportation.  

“It’s another point of access that allows patients to get to us,” Threadgill said. 

“We’re going to be open five days a week,” Evara chief operating officer Kim Schuknecht said, adding that the clinic will be staffed by a provider and a medical assistant. There’s also a kiosk for telehealth visits.  

Thursday, Johnson and other leaders lauded the coalition of nonprofits and other organizations that emerged over the years to provide critical resources to the community. The center is also a DCF partner, allowing residents to use its computer lab to access food stamps and other benefits. 

The food pantry, a partnership between Feeding Tampa Bay and the Rays, opened in October 2019. Those in need can “shop” in the bright, cheerful space.

“During the pandemic, we continued with the food pantry, but we held it outside. Each week, 15 volunteers served about 200 families,” Johnson said, adding that the center even saw people from as far away as Sarasota, though most seeking food were from St. Petersburg. 

Campbell Park is now United Way Suncoast’s largest resource center. The nonprofit opened its first neighborhood center in Sulphur Springs in early 2008. As part of the process to establish the facility, the organization met with neighborhood residents and leaders, teachers, faith-based organizations and nonprofits in the community. Similar discussions took place in Clearwater’s North Greenwood neighborhood. 

At Campbell Park, Johnson said: “We have tried to develop a center that’s a one-stop shop. If it’s something we don’t offer, we know someone who does.”