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This article by Barbara Fox was prepared for the October 16, 2002 edition of U.S. 1 Newspaper. All rights reserved.

Life in the Fast Lane

If you were to imagine an office where the homeless

come for help, you would likely picture worn carpet, packed rooms

filled with restless children, generally a makeshift and grimy scene.

Not now. The preeminent organization that helps the homeless in Mercer

County, HomeFront, has new digs. In the front is a reception desk

worthy of the Carnegie Center and in the back is a warehouse filled

with furniture and food. With this move it quadrupled its space yet

pays less than it did before — it owns the building, which also

holds a branch of the U.S. Post Office and a gymnastics school.

Thus HomeFront is in a particularly celebratory mood for its annual

gala "Building a Better World" on Saturday, October 19, at

7 p.m. at Princeton Day School. Cost: $150. Call 609-989-9417.

How HomeFront scored this real estate coup — and came to be a

landlord to the federal government — is directly attributable

to how Celia Bernstein (shown in the photo above) combined her for-profit

career with her do-gooder instincts. After working in commercial real

estate and volunteering for HomeFront on the side, she joined founder

Connie Mercer full time. Bernstein had the vision to realize that

HomeFront could pay less and get more by buying the building, and

she had the skills to accomplish the design and construction of the

new offices at minimum cost.

The daughter of a physician, Bernstein majored in business at the

University of Alabama at Birmingham, Class of 1989, and started out

as a commercial real estate broker in Huntsville. When she and her

husband moved to New Jersey, she went to work for Mutual of New York.

She was in charge of 160 sites — their selection, leasing, and

renovation. Meanwhile she volunteered for HomeFront and moved the

organization out of the home of founder Connie Mercer and into its

first office. After five years, says Bernstein, "Connie got a

grant to hire an operations person and came looking for me."

Just when HomeFront needed to expand, Bernstein’s husband Marlon (who

has his own realty and design/build businesses in Trenton) saw the

for-sale sign on a 42,000-foot Princeton Pike building owned by Beitel

Displays. It had a tenant on each end but no public access for the

vacant 17,000-foot warehouse in the middle. Bernstein had the vision

to put in a front door and add some windows.

The $1.4 million purchase was financed with EDA bonds and commercial

loan from Fleet Bank. "I pushed them hard and I feel we got a

good deal," says Bernstein. "To get through the headache of

the financing and the construction could easily have cost another

25 percent more."

It was a complicated transaction, to which Dan Haggerty of Stark &

Stark gave pro bono time. Renovations cost $400,000, raised in a capital

campaign led by Don Hoffman, who works for J.P. Morgan. V.J. Scozzari

& Sons was the design-build contractor and Saphire Associates the

architect. "Diversified Rack gave thousands of dollars worth of

shelving, and Home Depot donated acres of sheetrock," says Bernstein.

Saphire’s design: a large warm friendly type reception area, an area

for kids to be entertained while parents talk with case managers,

a private counseling room, a larger food pantry and an emergency provisions

room.

"You grow up with dreams of what you think you want to do,"

says Bernstein. "I made it to New York and ran with the wolves

and now am more than satisfied to spend my talents helping those who

need the help the most."