BUFFALO, N.Y. (WKBW) — FeedMore WNY, which was born from a merger of the Food Bank of WNY and Meals on Wheels for WNY, announced it plans to build a new facility in Hamburg as it faces space imitations at its current locations.
The merger took place in January 2020 and since then FeedMore WNY has been operating out of two primary facilities — the legacy Food Bank of WNY facility at 91 Holt Street and the legacy Meals on Wheels for WNY facility at 100 James E. Casey Drive. FeedMore says between the rapid growth of program participants and increased demand for services, those two facilities are operating beyond their capacity.
According to FeedMore, there is no room to hire additional staff or grow programs because of this. In addition, over the last couple years, it has had to turn away roughly 1.2 million pounds of food donations annually because they could not be stored or repacked safely.
The new facility will be built on 74 acres of land in Hamburg with an estimated cost of $99 million.
FeedMore says the preliminary design of the new 197,700-square-foot facility will:
- Increase the warehouse space
- Increase commercial kitchen capacity
- Expand its workforce development program
- Add dedicated clean rooms to repack donated pet and human food
- Provide space to expand feeding programs
- Creates capacity to increase staff size by approximately 25% and volunteer hours by 50%
Below is a site map provided by FeedMore WNY.
“We are working with a number of foundations, corporations and community members on lead commitments of significant, multi-year gifts in support of this important effort. New York State Governor Kathy Hochul and state lawmakers included $24 million for the project in the recently passed budget. Senator Chuck Schumer, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand and former Representative Chris Jacobs also helped secure $2 million in federal funding and Assemblyman Jon Rivera secured a lead grant of $250,000. And this is just the start. We will need many, many commitments – large and small – to secure FeedMore’s future. There will be a celebratory campaign kickoff later this year for all of our Western New York community members to participate in this critical community campaign.”
According to FeedMore, its move will not affect its clients because it brings its services directly to them. In addition, less than 1% of its volunteers work in one of its current buildings.
