A longtime community staple, the CommunityWorx thrift store, reopened its doors in Chapel Hill recently after being closed for months due to the pandemic.

President and CEO of CommunityWorx Barbara Jessie-Black spoke with 97.9 The Hill’s Aaron Keck about how the reopening process has gone and what kind of changes people should expect.

Formerly known as the PTA Thrift Shop, CommunityWorx has been serving Chapel Hill and Carrboro since 1952—with a store in each town since 1980. While the Carrboro location remains closed until July, the location on Elliott Road in Chapel Hill is now back open with limited hours.

In addition to the limited hours, a maximum of 20 people are allowed inside in order to better enforce social distancing guidelines. Even with those restrictions, Jessie-Black said there was a line of approximately 50 people waiting to get in on the store’s first day back in business.

“It was all the way up to Whole Foods,” Jessie-Black said, in reference to the line of people outside. “And yes, people were social distancing.

“Of course, we’re asking for folks to wear masks,” she added. “If they don’t have a mask, we’re happy to provide that. Every single person that was in line, and that came through the doors, had a mask.”

Donations have continued to roll in at both locations, using a self-serve method that aims to limit contact between people. In the extra hours the Chapel Hill store has gained with the limited schedule, employees have focused on sanitizing and cleaning—as well as turning over the products to keep up with all of the donations coming in.

Jessie-Black said all of the support and appreciation from the community has made the hard work worth it.

“Just making it a comfortable environment and a sanitary environment for people to shop–which is hard when you’re doing thrift–it has been a labor of love,” Jessie-Black said. “And we are excited to be open again.”

Although the traditional focus of CommunityWorx has been centered around students in the classroom, recent events have made Jessie-Black and her team realize that the community is only as whole as the youth and the people around it.

Access to resources is different for every family, which is something that helped the company recognize what its role in the community truly is.

“With COVID-19 and everything else that’s going on in the world, the economic aspects of injustice are pretty glaring,” Jessie-Black said. “The part that we play in that is to make sure that families and youth in our community have access to resources that we are so generously gifted by community members.”

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