FOOD for Lane County asking community to help raise $500K to expand capacity

FOOD for Lane County is asking for the community to help fundraise $500,000 in hopes of renovating its Bailey Hill warehouse, which opened in 1999, as soon as early January.

The local food bank, a network of more than 4,000 volunteers and 150 partner agencies, already has raised $9 million of its $9.5 million yearslong capital campaign. The "Build to Serve" campaign to increase the nonprofit's capacity began in 2017 and funding went toward purchasing and retrofitting the West Broadway Distribution Center. The center opened in September 2019, just in time, it would turn out, to serve the urgent need that emerged alongside the COVID-19 pandemic. 

"Initially, the demand for food increased, right after the onset of the pandemic in early 2020 March, April, May, a lot of people were thrown out of work," Executive Director Tom Mulhern said. "They were scared, they were going to food banks in the same way that people were cleaning out the shelves at grocery stores."

The campaign's first phase created additional refrigeration and freezer space, making it easier to accept larger food donations. Mulhern said he thinks pandemic-related assistance, such as stimulus checks and food stamp increases, helped ease the need as the pandemic went on, but questions remain about the impacts to come. 

"Sometimes interventions really do make a difference," Mulhern said. "Going forward, there's a lot of unknown. The impact of the pandemic, economically, on low-income households, if past recessions and situations are any guide, they play out over a longer period of time."

More:'Not getting any easier': Fewer in U.S. turn to food banks, but millions still in need

Phase 2 of “Building To Serve” includes updating and improving the Bailey Hill facility, adding refrigeration and a Cool Room to better process larger amounts of perishable foods, a training center for partner agencies and an improved work space for volunteers. 

FFLC distributed a record nine million pounds of food in the 2019-'20 fiscal year. But the need always has been large. The year before, the group distributed eigmillion pounds of food. 

"There are still a lot of people who are struggling in a significant way," Mulhern said. "It's around one in five people in Lane County who are really struggling, still struggling, to make ends meet."

Learn more about the campaign online at supportfflc.org.

Contact reporter Tatiana Parafiniuk-Talesnick at Tatiana@registerguard.com or 541-521-7512, and follow her on Twitter @TatianaSophiaPT. Want more stories like this? Subscribe to get unlimited access and support local journalism.