The Rhode Island Community Food Bank is moving, but it will be next year before the relocation is completed.
The non-profit organization, which collects perishable and non-perishable food items for distribution around the state, has purchased the former Rojack’s supermarket located off Route 10 in Providence for $2.8 million.
The new 70,000-square-foot facility, located in the Huntington Industrial Park, will allow the organization to increase its distribution from approximately six million pounds to nine million pounds annually as well as improve the number of people being helped each month from 35,000 to 50,000.
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"For us to become a nine million pound distributor, we require a 12 million pound capacity intake," said Bernie Beaudreau, executive director of the Food Bank. "That’s because we are dealing with food that is not 100 percent usable. There is as much as 20 to 25 percent that we can’t use. Right now we are taking in 8 million pounds and distributing 6 (million pounds.) We are at capacity. We are just getting jammed, and have a lot of conflicts in terms of space."
According to Beaudreau, the organization has been looking to move out of its current facility in West Warwick for more than a year. It took this long to find a spot, he said, because of the organization’s specific needs.
"We did quite a lot of research in terms of food bank capacity and the space needed for both perishable and non-perishable goods," he said. "We worked with a few real estate agents. Unfortunately we spent a lot of time looking at inappropriate stuff like old decrepit buildings. A lot of the facilities were also away from our central service area – we wanted to be as close to Providence as we could."
Beaudreau said the new facility is a major part of the organization’s two-prong strategy to reduce hunger in Rhode Island. The other part, he said, is to coordinate information about the food stamp program and provide it to the state’s needy residents.
In the last five years the agency has made great strides in declining hunger in the state reducing the rate of hunger from 2.6 percent to 1.9. According to Beaudreau, the statistic makes Rhode Island the second fastest hunger reducing state in the country.
"We are well on our way," he said. "This facility is key because if we don’t have the space, we can’t process the food, and we can’t get it out. Beaudreau said he expects the food bank to be in its new home by January of 2003.
