LEBANON — An organization that provides durable medical equipment to people free of charge has found a new home.
The Health Closet, which is a joint venture between the Hanover and Canaan Lions clubs, will move to 2 Mascoma St., in downtown Lebanon in a space formerly occupied by theater company Revels North, which shuttered at the end of 2025.
The building — which also houses Sunrise Buffet and Pellegrino’s Italian Market — is owned by developer Mike Davidson’s company Recreo LLC.
Members of the Health Closet, which is in the process of becoming a separate Lions Club, are in the process of signing a three-year lease for the space, Hanover Lions Club member William “Star” Johnson said in a Thursday evening phone interview.
“Mike and his company have been very generous and really are helping us very significantly with this effort,” Johnson said a Thursday evening phone interview.
“We are excited to welcome the Health Closet to downtown Lebanon,” Tim Sidore, managing agent for Recreo LLC, wrote in an email. “This community-focused endeavor reflects our commitment to revitalizing downtowns and improving the quality of living for all local residents.”
Johnson and Sidore declined to say how much the organization will pay in rent.
The organization is scheduled to move from its current space at 325 Mount Support Road in Lebanon beginning at 10 a.m. Saturday, Feb. 28.
The Health Closet has to vacate its current space by March 15 because Hypertherm — which was leasing the Mount Support Road building and allowed the Health Closet to use a portion of the warehouse for free — is moving out of the building, which is set to become the home of a new charter school.
Since learning of the end of the lease last fall, Health Closet organizers have been searching for a new location with enough square footage to store the hospital beds, wheelchairs, shower chairs and hundreds of other pieces of durable medical equipment. Organizers also wanted a space that was near either I-89 or I-91 because they transport equipment all over the Twin States.
The new, roughly 2,400-square-foot space delivers on all fronts. It even has a loading dock, ground level access and bathrooms.
“It’s almost absolutely perfect,” said Hanover Lions Club member John Bayliss, who oversees the Health Closet program with Canaan Lions Club member Harry Armstrong.
Some version of the Health Closet has existed for around 40 years, though it wasn’t always called that: It was simply another service project that community-minded Lions Club members took on.
Over the last few years, the program expanded and the equipment Armstrong and Bayliss collected multiplied.
The scale of the project has made it challenging to find a more permanent home. There had been concern that if they could not find a new home for the Health Closet, the collection would have had to have been split up into multiple locations, including members’ garages.
“We’re excited,” Bayliss said of the new location in a Friday morning phone interview.
The three-year lease also will allow the volunteers to settle in more and Bayliss is looking forward to putting up shelves to better organize the equipment they receive.
People will be able to stop by during open hours, which are currently from 9 a.m. to noon most days, as well as contact Bayliss and Armstrong to arrange equipment drop-offs and pickups.
“I am thrilled for the Health Closet,” Helen Hong, executive director of the White River Junction-based COVER Home Repair & Store, said in an email.
“It has been wonderful to see our Upper Valley community coming together to ensure that a vital resource remains available,” said Hong, who has been part of a group of people who have been assisting the Lions Club in trying to find a new home for the Health Closet.
The new location and the new club go hand in hand. Last month, the organizers started to recruit people to form a new specialty Lions Club to focus primarily on the Health Closet. By breaking it off into a separate club, it would have its own board and the focus would be solely on the Health Closet, instead of trying to manage it along with the myriad programs the Canaan and Hanover Lions clubs support.
So far, they have nearly 40 new members — many of whom had no prior affiliation with a Lions Club. The new members run the gamut from those who are retired to those who are still working.
“These are all people who either have relatives who have been assisted by the Health Closet or they work in the medical industry so they’ve seen the Health Closet in action,” Bayliss said. “They’re aware of what we’re doing and what we’re trying to do.”
Plans are in the works to set up a more formal structure to set up deliveries and volunteer schedules, so that the deliveries can be spread out among people beyond Bayliss and Armstrong.
“I’m blown away. I’m amazed at the response that we’ve got,” Bayliss said. “I’m excited to get going and so is Harry.”
Those who are interested in volunteering to assist with the move, and/or join the new club, can contact Johnson at 603-381-8603 or star@biggreenre.com. Visit healthcloset.org for more information about the Health Closet.