‘It’s happening’

MOSES LAKE — After eight years of effort, donations and fundraising efforts throughout the community, it’s here. Moses Lake Food Bank Director Peny Archer said Moving Day is about a month away.

“The official move-in date is Dec. 5,” Archer said.

The building, about 10,000 square feet, will house the food bank’s local distribution area; a separate building refurbished in 2020 houses food to be distributed to other regional food banks. Food is delivered to the Moses Lake food bank and then redistributed to 34 food banks in central Washington.

The complex is located at the intersection of North Grape Drive and SR 17 and has room to grow if necessary, Archer said. Both the existing buildings are painted light green with dark green trim, in tribute to a longtime Moses Lake construction business and its owner’s legacy.

“Marc Marchand had two-tone green trucks,” Archer said.

Marchand put the land where the food bank is located in a trust, and directed that it be used for a charitable purpose. Marchand’s daughter Chris Hansen and her husband Mick donated the land to the food bank project in 2014.

The food bank’s board of directors has been raising money ever since, and the project received a big boost from state Senator Judy Warnick, Chris Hansen said during the groundbreaking ceremony in July 2021. The project received two allocations from the state capital budget as a result of Warnick’s work, $2 million in 2019 and $1.9 million in 2021.

Warnick said during the groundbreaking that the project had become very important to her. Agriculture is the backbone of the local economy, and that people were going hungry here was just wrong, she said.

An open house will be scheduled sometime in early 2023 to give Moses Lake residents a close look at the end result.

“It couldn’t have been done without the help of the community,” Archer said.

The new structure has a cavernous back room for food storage and a new front office for food pickup.

“We visited a lot of food banks, took what we liked, and built a food bank,” Archer said.

The design will be much more efficient than the existing building on Marina Drive, she said.

“We made this building work,” Archer said of the old facility. “It was not designed to be a food bank. The new one is designed to be a food bank. Which will make our lives easier, will be much more efficient – (we’ll) just have the room to be efficient.”

Making room for everything in the Marina Drive facility sometimes conflicted with that goal of efficient use of the space, she said.

“Sometimes we would move pallets (of food) three or four times, and that might be in 24 hours, just to let us do business as we need to,” she said. “So now we’ll have room. It’s going to make life so much easier for us.”

Construction crews were finishing the drywall and paving the parking lot Thursday morning. The design emphasizes the building’s high ceilings; the tall lobby windows let in abundant light. Basalt pillars near the front entrance will be part of a fountain to be built next year, also in tribute to Marchand.

“He made things so wonderful for the community,” Archer said.

A desk is built in for the volunteers who check in food bank customers and there’s a break room for volunteers and workers, something that’s not available on Marina Drive.

“It’s going to be easier for everybody,” Archer said. “Which is kind of nice, because this is a very emotionally taxing job. People don’t come and see you when things are growing great. We only see people that are having a very hard time and can’t afford to feed their kids. Or themselves.”

The current economic challenges have made a difficult situation even more difficult.

“These families are very dependent on us,” she said. “It’s hard for the families - especially I think seniors, because they’re much more on a fixed income.”

The new facility has a freezer so big there’s an echo in the space.

“Bigger freezers, bigger refrigerators, bigger dry space – which is canned and boxed food,” Archer said. “More room for us to receive donated food.”

She said there are some mixed emotions as Moving Day approaches – it’s both exciting and scary – but there’s a lot of anticipation and gratitude, too.

“I wake up sometimes and I’m (asking) ‘Is that a dream?’ And then I have to sit a minute and (say), ‘No, it’s real. It’s happening,’” she said.

Cheryl Schweizer can be reached via email at education@columbiabasinherald.com.