Food Bank Chair Katharine Strang addresses the crowd during the Grand Opening of the New North Bay Food Bank location. PHOTO BY CHRIS DAWSON.
The North Bay Food Bank has found a new home.
The old facility on Hammond is a thing of the past and now the Food Bank can be found at a vibrant new location on the corner of Fisher and Princess Street.
Food Bank officials hosted a grand opening for the building that they can truly call their own.
“Since the inception of the food bank we’ve paid rent,” said North Bay Food Bank Chair Katharine Strang.
“The intention was there were some investments and donations made to us many years ago with money left to us to buy a building, with the intention to buy a building so it sat in investments for a long period of time until we could find a place that we could buy. When this building became available, we came in, we saw a vision and we are so grateful that it worked out for us.”
The new location will allow the Food Bank to operate comfortably out of one location and is conveniently located near four bus routes.
Strang says the other location was too small and they were even forced to rent storage units to store some of the food.
“We had a building that didn’t house what we needed, we had a waiting area that would fit 20 people, in the winter we had problems with parking, we had small children that came here very often, there was traffic on the street there were so many issues that we faced that we knew we had to change it up,” admitted Strang about the old location.
A number of local organizations helped refurbish the new location, with the biggest financial boost coming from Mark and Steven Deacon, who donated $50,000 to help build an addition onto the new facility.
Mark Deacon, who sits on the Food Bank Board of Directors, says owning the building will create huge benefits down the road for the Food Bank.
“We were astounded by the need for the Food Bank so when we got involved it was a very natural thing to think about a donation here, it allows us to see our money have an immediate impact and the fact that we can now, as a food bank, have over $3000 a month extra to put into programming, to buy food, to serve our clients that we don’t have to put into rent anymore,” said Deacon.
“So the building as you see it today is paid for, there’s no debt and to us that’s the biggest legacy that anybody can leave.”
The building itself will carry the name Martinello House, which recognized the Food Bank founder Marty Martinello. Also Coach4Food, the largest Food Bank fundraiser, was recognized with a large sign in the front lobby.
