CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — Construction of the newest facility of The Coastal Bend Food Bank is progressing and expected to be completed soon.
Directors of the non-profit organization say the construction is years in the making, however, during the pandemic, they realized they needed more space to serve the community.
"When we started with Covid, with the pandemic that the need really escalated and really showed our weakness of not being able to have enough product," James Burnett, Director of Operations said, "We’re paying for off-site storage for frozen and for dry products, so it really told us up front that we needed a new facility.”
The food bank broke ground with construction back in April 2022, costing nearly $30 million and stretching more than 108,000 square feet. This building will be five times bigger than the current building located at 826 Krill Steet.
"The one thing we needed was the space to store product, particularly nutritious perishable product," Burnett said, "And we’re very limit with our current building, so we made sure going in that we would have plenty of room to store all that food that we needed for the next 15 years or so.”
With the new building, the Coastal Bend Food Bank also plans to expand opportunities with its nutrition education and outreach programs.
The new building will be located at 5442 Bear Lane. Construction is expected to be done by the end of September, with operations beginning the first week of October.
If you'd like to volunteer, donate, or need assistance, head to their website for more information.
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