By Joel Magalnick, Editor, JTNews
Though reporters and economists have been saying for the past few months that the recession is over, victims of the so-called jobless recovery would beg to differ. Nobody can attest to that more than workers in food banks across the country.
The statistics bear that out at the food bank that specializes in serving Seattle’s downtown and Capitol Hill neighborhoods as well as the area’s Jewish community, for instance. This past January the food bank at Jewish Family Service gave away more than 24,000 pounds of food — an 18 percent increase over the previous January, when the economy was still spiraling downward. And the number of people, including many senior citizens, in need of emergency services continues to rise.
But Ken Weinberg, CEO of JFS, was smiling.
“Good news is in very short supply,” he said to a room packed with supporters and staff on the morning of Sun., March 7 who attended the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the expanded Polack Food Bank. “This food bank is very good news, for our clients, our city, our state, and our country.”
The remodeled facility will enable JFS to store more food, including perishable items, as well as serve its clients more efficiently. The dedicated area, which was constructed within the confines of JFS’s current building, has a wide sliding door at the street for food bank employees to receive pallet shipments, shelves at the back filled with cartons of non-perishable foods, two walk-in coolers, and a design that allows clients easy in-and-out access.
“We can now adopt a consumer choice model, which means that clients can choose items rather than receiving a pre-packaged bag of food,” Dianne Loeb, JFS’s board president, told the group.
Selected by former Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels’ office, JFS received $500,000 from last year’s federal stimulus package. The Community Development Block program from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development received $3.2 million overall in stimulus funding; JFS was one of four projects in the region to receive a grant. One of the reasons JFS was able to receive the funding was due to a requirement of the grant that the project be “shovel-ready” within 90 days.
“Anyone who’s been involved in a construction project knows that it’s quite a feat to pull off the planning phase in three months,” Loeb said. “The reason we were able to do this is because we’d already begun planning for a new facility.”
JFS is in its fourth year of a strategic plan that includes the expansion of its current Capitol Hill building. Groundbreaking for that project is expected to occur in November.
Representatives from Mayor Mike McGinn’s office, King County Executive Dow Constantine, and representatives from Sen. Patty Murray’s and Rep. Jim McDermott’s office attended the opening.