Next year’s Walk & Knock donations may well pass through an impressive new warehouse facility before heading on to local food banks and, finally, hungry people’s homes.
The Clark County Food Bank crossed a fundraising finish line in time to score a hoped-for additional infusion of cash from the Washington Legislature. With a grand total of more than $4.2 million now in hand, the food bank is ready to built a new headquarters and distribution center in Minnehaha.
“We made it,” said development officer Greg Flakus, breathing a definite sigh of relief. “It’s an amazing story of how a community can get together.”
The new property is 2.09 acres at the corner of Northeast 47th Avenue and 68th Drive, in the Cold Creek Industrial Park. The food bank plans to build a 22,000-square-foot warehouse, distribution center and headquarters that includes enough space to store large shipments of food, as well as built-in refrigeration, offices and meeting space.
The current leased warehouse, farther north in Hazel Dell, has none of those things. It’s 8,000 square feet — not including outside storage containers that were donated almost 20 years ago as a “temporary solution,” Flakus said. Those containers aren’t big enough to accommodate forklifts and are hard to use in bad weather, Flakus said.
All those limitations have hampered the food bank’s ability to fulfill its mission.
“Lacking the space to properly store, sort, repack and distribute food products, the Clark County Food Bank routinely turns down bulk food and large shipments of fresh produce,” a recent statement from the food bank said. Meanwhile, local hunger and need have grown substantially, along with overall population, amid the current economic downturn.
Local food banks have seen a 25 percent increase in people asking for help, according to a recent state snapshot of poverty, and Clark County’s unemployment rate is reported at 13.3 percent — the highest in the state.
Twists and turns
Flakus said the story of raising the necessary money was full of suspenseful ups and downs.
It started in September 2008, he said, when Sen. Patty Murray managed to insert a $712,000 construction allocation into the final Bush Administration federal budget. Other sizeable private gifts came in, too, he said, and the food bank started meeting with Clark County officials to plan a warehouse on the grounds of the burgeoning Heritage Farm on Northeast 78th Street.
Everyone was excited about a new Clark County Food Bank warehouse on that site, he said — until it became clear that, even with the gift of free land, additional development costs would lift the overall price far past anything the nonprofit agency could ever afford.
“That was the first turn,” Flakus said. The food bank continued raising money — and hearing from various potential donors that they’d be interested as soon as there was some definite real estate involved, he said.
Meanwhile, state representatives Jim Moeller, Jim Jacks and the late Bill Fromhold, all Vancouver Democrats, carried the food bank’s flag in the state Legislature. Fromhold in particular was instrumental in lobbying other legislators and eventually securing a promise of $1.5 million in the state’s capital budget, but only if the food bank could match that amount in local donations.
“That was huge,” said Flakus. “That was the tipping point for us. If Bill Fromhold was still alive, I know he’d be so pleased with what we’ve done.”
Next, he said, the food bank’s steering committee started shopping for existing warehouses for sale. They settled on one in the Orchards area and got pretty close to a deal to buy it for $3 million, but the seller pulled out at the last minute.
“That was very disappointing but we just kept moving along,” Flakus said.
The food bank moved along to Minnehaha and the Cold Creek Industrial Park, Flakus said, partially because the property owner there had already secured the permits and infrastructure for an eight-plot warehouse layout.
“We finally had a place that would work, and renderings to show donors what it would look like. We had something for them to get really excited about,” Flakus said.
In September, the food bank held a fundraising gathering in a local home and raised an additional $450,000 in one spectacular evening. Since then, it’s had an additional $700,000 in private donations and gifts from foundations. All was in order by Dec. 1, he said, allowing the Legislature to write that final $1.5 million check.
Flakus said the construction job should go out to bid in January and construction should begin in March. If all goes well, he said, the job will be done in autumn 2011.
“We are very hopeful we’ll be able to celebrate next year’s Walk and Knock in the new building,” he said.
Walk and Knock, the county’s biggest food drive, is always held the first Saturday in December. Last week’s event is still being tallied, but the 2009 collection was a record-setter, with 162 tons of food donations scooped up.
Fundraising for the Clark County Food Bank “doesn’t stop now,” Flakus added. “Once we move in, we’ve got new operational costs. We’ve got sufficient funds to make sure we’re OK for two years, but it sure would be wonderful to find someone with an endowment.”
