Bonner Community Food Bank set to double in size at new location

By Zach Hagadone
Reader Staff

The Bonner Community Food Bank is on the verge of a major new phase in its more than 40 years of serving area residents with free food assistance, after acquiring a new location in Ponderay.

Executive Director Debbie Love told the Reader that the food bank closed on the 12,222-square-foot space at 900 Kootenai Cutoff Road in April, providing a substantial increase from the 5,900-square-foot building it has been operating in for the past 15 years.

“We were looking for something that I like to say is ‘generational,’” Love said. “You know, years beyond when I’m here, it’ll always be here for our community.”

The food bank will remain at its current location at 1707 Culvers Drive, in Sandpoint, until sometime in the fall when operations will begin fully transitioning to the new space, which represents a doubling in size. Beyond that, the 1.7-acre Kootenai Cutoff property comes with more parking both in the front and rear of the building, a roll-up loading door, green space for community gardens, and a 2,400-square-foot outbuilding that could be converted into a classroom or commercial kitchen.

“We’re looking at probably three to five years for that,” Love said of the classroom/commercial kitchen, “but there’s just all these opportunities that we can provide for the community to better serve them. And one of the biggest things, too, is it’s on the SPOT bus route, so we are super excited about the location.”

The move comes amid years of increasing demand for the food bank’s services, with 10,650 pounds of food purchased and 3,126 community members supported in April alone. That high demand has strained the storage capacity of the current location, plus the food bank’s lease of its north parking lot is up at the end of the year.

Growing into the new Ponderay space comes at an opportune time, and in addition to providing more warehouse capacity also positions the food bank to serve as a hub for area food pantries.

“Harvest, out of Spokane, stopped doing their monthly deliveries a couple years ago, so it’d be nice to be a resource for the Clark Fork pantry and Priest Lake pantry — people could come to us for more support and we’d have food to support them, too,” Love said.

According to property records, the Kootenai Cutoff location was valued at more than $1 million, and Love said the nonprofit was able to acquire it thanks to years of savings and a loan. The purchase expense will also be offset when the food bank sells its current location.

Meanwhile, work on the new facility will include repaving and expanding the parking areas, and volunteers — including from Cedar Hills Church and Numerica Credit Union — will lend a hand with cleaning and painting the interior in June. 

Some other plans will require approval by the city of Ponderay, though Love said, “Once we can have that, then we’ll have a timeline, but we’re looking to start moving in October, so if people want to come out to help with that, we would love the support there.”

Right off the bat, Love said the food bank will be using more than half the new space, “but we’ll have more room to grow, and really we’ll be able to do more volunteer work groups — we’ll be able to have more larger groups coming in to help us.”

To learn more about the Bonner Community Food Bank and its services, go to bonnerfoodbank.org. To volunteer or otherwise help the food bank’s mission, go to the website, call 208-263-3663 or email [email protected].