Black Bottom Community CDC
Our History
The founding of Black Bottom Community CDC, a 501(c)3 community development corporation in March 2024, was a strategic move by its Board of Directors to better ensure the operational and financial sustainability of its primary mission – to provide hungry and food insecure Detroiters access to free nutritious foods by reclaiming fresh food otherwise on its way to landfills. Its mission however, predates both the establishment of the BBC CDC and its operation of the Field Street Community Fridge, the latter founded in 2022.
Photo: BBC CDC is housed at Black Bottom Businesses, LLC. A former church, the property is located on the corner of Field Street (1812) and Kercheval Avenue.
Photo: BBC CDC is housed at Black Bottom Businesses, LLC. A former church, the property is located on the eastside of Detroit, on the corner of Field Street and Kercheval Avenue.
Belinda Gilmore, Board President and FRIDGE Operator was inspired by Church of the Messiah Pastor Barry Randolph who preached taking the church into the community. Alongside fellow congregants, Belinda weekly packed food boxes to help local families even before the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. Covid made food scarcity in Detroit even more dire such that meeting the need soon outpaced the capacity of the church. Undaunted, Gilmore steered food deliveries to and weekly redistribution from her Eastside Detroit home supported by a corps of dedicated neighborhood volunteers.
Photo: Food deliveries are received at the BBC CDC FRIDGE site in all types of weather, year round.
For Maria Thomas, BBC CDC Board Director and its first Secretary, Gilmore’s call for food distribution help was not a stretch from her long-term advocacy for Sustainability and Renewable Energies – Food is Energy, food rescue reduces food waste, landfill impacts and the number of people who go to bed hungry. Together with her husband Pastor Samuel Thomas, their Food Ministry coordinated weekly food pickup from Gilmore’s home and delivery to Islandview and other Detroit neighborhood residents.
Photo: Maria Tomas informing neighborhood Food Share participant of local halal food resources.
Other volunteers joined the effort extending the reach of the distribution and number of families served, including BBC CDC Director/Treasurer Paule Cruz Takash. An anthropologist, Takash is no stranger to solution driven grassroots organizing in which she has participated elsewhere in the US and in Latin America.
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The volunteer food pick up and neighborhood distribution continued once Gilmore moved operations in 2021 from her home to a property on Field Street and Kercheval. Upon the inauguration of the Field Street Community Fridge in 2022, these weekly distribution networks extended the reach of the FRIDGE into surrounding neighborhoods as well as to folks without transportation or otherwise housebound.
Photo: Pastor Sam Thomas, Volunteer Neighborhood Food Share Team Leader
The Field Street Community Fridge also brought new partners together to address food insecurity – a partnership of local businesses and mutual aid organizations was forged to provide the outdoor refrigeration, pantry, shelter buildout and initial stocking of the community fridge. Gilmore thereafter assumed the day-to-day costs, food procurement for and operations of the FRIDGE. Recognizing her contributions and the Field Street Community Fridge as “assets to the city,“ the City of Detroit presented Gilmore with a Spirit of Detroit Award in 2023.
The FRIDGE partnership was comprised of Black Bottom Businesses LLC, Sister Pie, Planted Detroit, Detroit Community Fridge, and Food Rescue US-Detroit. New partners have come onboard as well including Catholic Charities of Southeast Michigan, Metro Food Rescue, and Keep Growing Detroit Farms. Also critical are BBC CDC’s community partners - neighborhood faith based and community organizations, and local and Metro Detroit suburban residents who regularly provision the FRIDGE.
OUR HISTORY demonstrates BBC CDC continues to be rooted in community led initiatives, supported by the community.
In 2025, the BBC CDC Field Street Community FRIDGE Project was awarded a City of Detroit Neighborhood Opportunity Fund - American Rescue Plan Act (NOF-ARPA) grant. These funds supported FRIDGE operations to provide fresh nutritious foods to even more low to moderate income Detroiters.
Greater funds are sought to further expand Black Bottom Community CDC’s food procurement, transport, distribution, refrigeration and warehousing capacity.
Photo: Neighborhood residents accessing the Field Street Community FRIDGE.
