For years, the need for food in Juneau has been growing. Now the city\u2019s only food bank is, too.<\/p>\n
The Southeast Alaska Food Bank recently began the groundwork for a much-needed expansion that will more than double the food storing capacity of the existing structure, according to Jim Wilcox, president of the food bank\u2019s board of directors.<\/p>\n
By the end of the next summer, the food bank will have a new warehouse space, including a walk-in cooler and a walk-in freezer. Once the addition is complete, the building\u2019s footprint will have grown from about 1,000 square feet to almost 3,000 square feet, allowing it to begin shipping food up in bulk from the Lower 48. This will be critical if the food bank is to continue meeting the city\u2019s growing needs, Wilcox said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe big chunks will be coming from down south, where we can get food for cheaper,\u201d Wilcox said. \u201cWe\u2019ll be bringing truck loads of food, and the reason we\u2019re doing this is because our volume is increasing every year; every month it\u2019s increasing.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Growing needs<\/strong><\/p>\n During the four years that Wilcox has sat on the food bank\u2019s board, he said he\u2019s seen the need for its services increase drastically. This is most obvious, he said, on Saturdays \u2014 the only day of the week the food bank is open directly to the public. On other days of the week, it provides food to its 30 or so member organizations, such as Catholic Community Service, which then distribute the food.<\/p>\n Though the food bank does not track or record who comes in, Wilcox said the number of people stopping in on Saturdays is on the rise. Darren Adams, the food bank\u2019s manager and sole employee, has noticed the same.<\/p>\n \u201cOnce upon a time, a typical Saturday used to be 15 to 20 people,\u201d Adams said of when he started working with the food bank 10 years ago. \u201cNow, a typical Saturday is 80, 90, 100 people.\u201d<\/p>\n Room to breath <\/strong><\/p>\n (and to feed)<\/strong><\/p>\n About a year ago, Wilcox said that a representative from Feeding America, a national \u201cnetwork of food banks,\u201d came to Juneau to inspect the Southeast Alaska Food Bank.<\/p>\n \u201cHe asked how much food we put out of this little building, so we told him,\u201d Wilcox said, explaining that as of Nov. 1 of this year the food bank had distributed more than 200,000 pounds of food. \u201cHe said \u2018Holy Jesus! You got that much food out of this little building?\u2019 He was amazed.\u201d<\/p>\n In the existing facility, Adams is constantly engaged in what basically amounts to a real-life game of Tetris \u2014 only instead of neatly stacking slowly falling geometric pieces, he stacks crates of food. And they don\u2019t conveniently disappear every time he forms a line of them.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s extraordinarily tight,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019ve got food stacked everywhere I can stack it.\u201d<\/p>\n Crates of food are stacked higher than Darren is tall. They are stacked under shelves. In some cases, crates of non-perishable food are even stacked in the refrigerator. Several bags of uncooked macaroni noodles share a shelf with milk in the refrigerator due to space constraints.<\/p>\n Right now, it\u2019s even tighter than usual. Typically, the food bank tries to distribute every pound of food that it takes in. For instance, in October, it took in about 22,000 pounds of food and gave out about 22,200 pounds (there was a small surplus from the month before). At the end of last month though, the food bank had 12,000-pound surplus thanks to a successful community Thanksgiving food drive.<\/p>\n The lack of space limits the food bank\u2019s ability to continue taking in new food, which also means it isn\u2019t able to store as much as it otherwise could. Though Adams\u2019 said this is a \u201cvery good problem to have,\u201d it won\u2019t be a problem once the new warehouse is built.<\/p>\n \u201cThis expansion is about thinking down the road,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s about thinking long term \u2014 over the course of the next 10, 20, 30 years.\u201d<\/p>\n Wilcox said that the new warehouse should give the food bank \u201cthe space it needs\u201d for years to come.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n A giving town<\/strong><\/p>\n All told, the food bank expansion will cost about $300,000. Wilcox is hopeful that the food bank won\u2019t have to pay for any of it.<\/p>\n \u201cI like to say that we\u2019re putting on a $300,000 addition, and we\u2019re not going to spend a dime,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n In order to make this happen, Wilcox is counting on community support. So far, several contractors have donated nearly $80,000 worth of labor and materials (though mostly labor) to the project, Wilcox said.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat we\u2019ve got now is going to get the building up,\u201d he said. \u201cWhat we need is the money for lumber and other stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n The food bank has begun its fundraising effort. Wilcox said that he has mailed out about 400 notices requesting money already, and the effort is ongoing. The food bank is also taking donations online through its website, seakfoodbank.com<\/p>\n Wilcox said he hopes to raise the remaining $200,000 by the time construction of the warehouse begins in April 2016, but he doesn\u2019t seem worried about the timeline. He has faith in Juneau.<\/p>\n \u201cThis town is a giving town,\u201d he said. \u201cSurely at least half of the businesses who have donated to us have employees who come through here on Saturday.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" For years, the need for food in Juneau has been growing. Now the city\u2019s only food bank is, too. The Southeast Alaska Food Bank recently began the groundwork for a much-needed expansion that will more than double the food storing capacity of the existing structure, according to Jim Wilcox, president of the food bank\u2019s board […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":8812,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[75],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-8811","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8811","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8811"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8811\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8812"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8811"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=8811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}