Second Harvest Column: New Location Update

By Lois Rockhill

This is the week we turn the refrigeration on at our new location in Delaware County. What a milestone for us! We spent months planning out and installing equipment to store tons of donated frozen and refrigerated foods. If all goes as planned we will flip the switch on Friday to see if everything works. If it purrs along as expected we’ll begin hauling our entire inventory from Anderson to Delaware County next week.

More than two years ago we learned that our facility at 14th and Meridian in downtown Anderson needed major correctional work done on the south wall. We compared the cost to repair with our future needs and chose to relocate. A thorough search of buildings for sale in our eight county service area along with a cost analysis of new construction led us to 36 acres with 110,000 square feet of industrial space in Delaware County. We purchased the property in April and have since been involved in preparing a 30,000 square foot building — one of four on the site — for occupancy.

We will continue our normal delivery of food to pantries, shelters, kitchens, child and adult programs in eight counties from the Delaware County location. No changes there. Every program we currently serve will be served. Shoppers from 130 programs will continue to find the inventory list on our website www.curehunger.org where they can download it and choose the cases of items they want delivered. We will pick those items from our inventory of a half million pounds or so and deliver to their door.

Our offices will stay in Anderson for another month or two while we install modular units at the Delaware County site for office space. It is a temporary fix to get us all in the same place. We have plans to renovate one of the two industrial buildings attached to our warehouse and will do so as resources allow. Once those renovations are complete we will have permanent offices, meeting rooms, training areas and space for volunteer projects.

Second Harvest Food Bank of East Central Indiana is fortunate to be supported by many friends throughout our service area. Individuals, organizations, corporations and foundations have stepped forward to help us get to this point in our relocation. Most recently we received a $300,000 grant from the Ball Brothers Foundation that will help finish up projects currently underway. There will be opportunities ahead for everyone to under gird our important work of ending hunger and feeding hope.

While we excitedly move forward to complete our relocation, we want to encourage area constituents to support two more initiatives. United Way and United Fund campaigns are about to complete their major annual pushes.

Your gift to those organizations in Delaware, Henry and Madison counties help support our food assistance programs there as well as other initiatives to better our communities.

Next I ask that you log onto the hungeractioncenter.org site. Once there, please register and then use the site to send a letter to D.C. in support of a strong nutrition title in the Farm Bill. This week may see the differences between the House and Senate versions hammered into a final document. For the sake of struggling families in our region, our state and our nation, it is imperative that we build the strongest nutrition title possible. Your letter will make a difference!

(Lois Rockhill is executive director of Second Harvest Food Bank of East Central Indiana. She can be reached at lrockhill@curehunger.org.)

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