Places like the Franklyn St. gym or old retail stores have been used in the past to help sort and distribute thousands of toys to local families. (Great Nanaimo Toy Drive)

By Alex Rawnsley

40TH ANNIVERSARY

Great Nanaimo Toy Drive desperately hunting for great Nanaimo location

Oct 19, 2022 | 4:13 PM

NANAIMO — They’ve got loads of people and tonnes of toys, now all the volunteers with the Great Nanaimo Toy Drive need is a place to get to work.

Organizers for the city’s biggest toy drive are entering the 11th hour of their search for a suitable location to sort and distribute tens of thousands of toys ahead of the holiday season.

Stuart Setch is helping lead the charge in finding a spot they can take over for a week in mid-December. He told NanaimoNewsNOW the Franklyn St. gym was perfect until it burnt down in 2018.

“After it burnt down, they’ve been sort of lost for a location so we’ve been relying on the community to donate a space we can use for the week so we can sort and distribute the toys to the families. But that space has been changing annually and is very up in the air.”

From their 2017 Great Nanaimo Toy Drive at the old Franklyn St. Gym, where gifts were sorted and distributed for years before burning down in 2018. (supplied)

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They don’t require much.

Setch said they need roughly 3,000 square feet of open space and someone to open the doors. The volunteer-run, non-profit group comes with their own insurance.

A space in central or south Nanaimo with easy access to transit would be ideal, according to Setch.

The group is trying to be proactive and find a location themselves, however, the changing reality of business in Nanaimo makes it challenging.

“We have all of these toys, all of these volunteers and we have all these families who are relying on it but if we don’t have the space, it causes a lot of anxiety because we don’t know where we’re going to end up and if we’re going to end up.”

They’ve inquired about different places such as the former Sears building at Nanaimo North Town Centre, or Rutherford elementary school, but for a variety of reasons they haven’t been able to make it work.

The Great Nanaimo Toy Drive has given out toys and other holiday gifts annually since 1982 and will celebrate its 40th anniversary in Nanaimo this year.

On average, they provide gifts for approximately 600 local families which equates to about 1,200 children.

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