Longtime Batavia toy drive organizers seek new home
Organizers of the Batavia ACCESS Toy Drive are appealing to the community for help in their search for a new home.
The program, which has gone on for 78 years, lost its storage space when the city recently demolished a building on Webster Street.
Now toys collected for this year’s distribution are being stored at a local business. But the program will need a new storage space by January.
“We’re grateful to Gem Lighting for helping us get through one more season,” Brittany Bailey-Cole, a volunteer with the Toy Drive, said in a news release from the city. “My grandmother, Mildred Bailey, started helping with this drive when it was still firefighters fixing up old toys, and my family has been part of it ever since. We don’t want to see it end on our watch, but we can’t do it without a place to call home.”
The charity says it has no money to buy property or pay rent.
“This community owes a debt of gratitude to the Bailey family and every volunteer who has kept this tradition going for nearly eight decades,” Mayor Jeffery D. Schielke said in the release.
Batavia firefighters started the toy drive in 1948, repairing donated toys to give to families in need. It collects new toys, books, puzzles, clothing and other items year-round. Cash donations are used to buy toys and gift cards to supplement what it doesn’t receive, typically items for teenagers.
The charity selects families to participate, and they come “shop” for items on a Sunday in December.
“That’s a legacy worth fighting for, and I hope our community steps up the way it always has,” Schielke said.
The Batavia ACCESS Toy Drive space has bounced around in recent years. It was located in the old First Baptist Church for a few years when the city owned the building. It was also in a former Walgreens space in a downtown strip mall and a vacant Sam’s Club store.
Toy drive organizers would like a 7,000-square-foot space.
Businesses, property owners or residents with space to offer, or ideas on how to sustain the program, are asked to call the city at (630) 454-2000.
The city has helped find space for the program in the past, but it can no longer do so.
City Administrator Laura Newman said in the news release that the city’s resources and staff time “have to be directed toward core city services.”
“That doesn’t mean we’ve stopped caring about this program or the families it serves,” Newman said. “We want to help connect the Toy Drive with a business, congregation, or resident who can offer what the city no longer can, and we know Batavia has that kind of generosity.”
ssarkauskas@dailyherald.com