NATCHEZ — The United Way opened its new office on Canal Street Tuesday to allow the public to come in and ask any questions, but no one came.

The office is now again located at 203 N. Canal St. — the former location of offices until the agency took over the food pantry and moved into its building.

The United Way chose to move back to Canal Street to give the office more visibility and a separate identity from the food pantry, United Way Chair Mike Gemmell said.

The United Way has decided to close the Natchez food pantry as of Aug. 1, unless another non-profit can come in and take over the day-to-day operations of the pantry.

United Way has been operating the food pantry for the last year-and-a-half, and its expenses were outstripping their funding, Gemmell said.

“I hate to do it, but we have the other 22 agencies that we fund, including the food bank in Vidalia, to think about,” he said. “The operating expenses for the food bank would be coming out of our general allotments for the other agencies, and the food pantry never actually applied for United Way funding.”

Catholic Charities has submitted an inquiry to the local diocese about taking over operation of the food pantry, and that decision is expected to be made June 15.

Until then, the United Way has applied for grants through the Wal-Mart and Kraft foundations to keep the pantry open, but thus far have been unsuccessful, United Way Administrative Assistant Brenda Cantu said.

“There is a lot of competition for those grants,” Cantu said.

The United Way was originally started to serve as an umbrella organization to collect funds for all local charities instead of all of those groups having to collect all of their funds themselves, Gemmell said.

“We checked with the national office, and they told us they discourage actual involvement,” he said. “They told us our job is to tap the caring strength of the community to find funding for the groups that meet our guidelines. We were never supposed to be operating it.”

The food pantry was originally started by the Natchez Ministerial Alliance, and currently feeds 1,100 families, up from 500 when the United Way took over on what was supposed to be a temporary basis, Gemmell said.

“I really hate to have to do this, but the operating expenses for the food pantry were $40,000 (for the year),” he said. “We’re only talking about a $100,000 budget.”