Running out of dry capacity storage and parking was the driving force for a $12 million expansion at the Odessa campus of the West Texas Food Bank.
The expansion will add 32,000 square feet in facilities; 10,000 to 12,000 square feet is the volunteer center and the rest is warehouse space.
Parkhill is the architect and Onyx is the contractor.
CEO Libby Stephens said it was thought that once COVID was over, the numbers of people needing assistance would decline. But that didn’t happen.
“They continue to literally go up every month and we were really running out of space,” Stephens said.
The facility on Pagewood Avenue was designed to hold 10 million pounds of food a year.
“We planned that with 3 or 4% growth moving forward. When we moved in here, we only did about 6 million pounds so we figured we would have plenty of room to grow,” Stephens said.
However, with COVID, inflation and immigration have all caused different issues for the food bank.
“Just our population in West Texas has grown a lot quicker than what people expected. With that comes need in our community, so we started really talking about what we thought we would need to move forward,” Stephens said.
After living through Hurricane Harvey, Snowpocalypse, COVID and a mass shooting, you start to think more about disaster awareness and preparation when you’re looking at facility design.
“Food banks across the country are changing their model a little bit and doing more with what we think of disaster relief because we keep getting called in to help with different things,” Stephens said.
She added that they decided to add two warehouses that are connected to the current campus.
Their Abell-Hanger Volunteer Center was turned into dry capacity storage during COVID and never went back to a volunteer center, so they added what they call two Abell-Hangers to the facility for dry capacity storage.
“What that will do is give us a 42-day inventory turn. It means we turn our inventory in our warehouse every 42 days, over 14 million pounds a year to be distributed to the 19 counties we serve. … The way that those two warehouses are designed so we can shut each one of them off so they don’t draw on us on operational costs. We only use them when we need them,” Stephens said.
Going through what they did with volunteers and the National Guard during COVID, it has been advised that they have a separate building for volunteers so you can keep your base of operations from being exposed.
“We also went ahead and designed a little bit of our 10,000-square-foot separate building that’s a volunteer center. That will have an indoor playground just like this facility does. It’ll have a huge volunteer space that permanently housed our Food 2 Kids, our Senior Box program. It has office space in there, a community room, lobby, bathrooms and all the fun stuff that our volunteers would need to come come volunteer at the food bank,” Stephens said.
The food bank still has 6,000 to 7,000 volunteers a year who help them do their work in the 19 counties they serve.
“We want to make sure that they have a very comfortable, inviting space to bring their families in to volunteer in our community. That’s an important part of the expansion,” Stephens said.
“We also put in a really nice drive-thru. We always thought we would get away from the drive-thru once COVID was over, but our seniors love the drive-thru option to pick up their senior box,” she added.
They designed a special parking lot equipped to handle three drive-thru lines.
“We have a special awning on there for our volunteers so they’re shielded from the sun, rain, snow, the ice or dust; whatever’s out there. We also have really invested in an innovative educational garden space that has been provided by the Scharbauer Foundation,” Stephens said.
She added that the garden space was important because it helps teach people about where food comes from, what grows out here and conservation.
She hopes to bring Earth Day and the children’s farmers’ market to Odessa.
“There’s about a $1.2 million investment that is upfront. That is all for kiddos to learn about agriculture and about where food comes from, how to grow food, about butterfly and bee pollinators. All that kind of stuff will be here in these gardens and we’re going to be so excited to have that here for our kiddos to come visit,” Stephens said.
They are going to expand their parking lot by 150 spaces and worked with Texas Division of Emergency Management about using the parking lot for a command center.
Stephens said they fundraised with private corporations, personal donors, foundations and oil companies to name a few.
Everyone was on board with helping the food bank prepare for the next 15 to 20 years.
“I’m really helping to bring some really fun things for education with food here to West Texas for our kiddos and conservation. May 2, we will have a private dinner for everybody who made that possible. May 3 is the formal ribbon cutting here at the West Texas Food Bank. We’re really excited. Lots of fun people are coming to talk about the food bank,” Stephens said.
This will finish out 2024 and then in 2025, the food bank will celebrate 40 years.
Stephens said she thinks the new space will draw more volunteers.
“I’m excited to see new groups and new faces and old faces still come in to the new volunteer center. I hope they really enjoy the space and continue to want to come back and help us do our work,” she added.
She noted that they will not have to add more staff.
“We’re really not looking to grow our operation. We’re looking to deal with what we have right now, which is 14 million pounds a year. And how do we become more effective and efficient with our space so that we can continue to do more. But at this time, we don’t need to add any headcount,” Stephens said.
She expressed thanks to those who have supported the food bank through the years.
“We definitely want to thank everyone who’s always supported us (and) who continue to support us, and who help us … really come to life and do it so quickly based upon our need and our community’s needs. We couldn’t do what we do every day without the support of our donors, of our community, of our volunteers,” Stephens said.
