Building Hope in Milford

Food Bank of Delaware constructs 67,000-square-foot facility

BY CHAD ROBINSON

OVER THE PAST THREE YEARS, the Food Bank of Delaware has been called upon to serve the people of Delaware in ways no one ever thought possible. Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Food Bank has distributed over 48 million pounds of food throughout the state of Delaware. While we now occupy an 80,000-square-foot facility in Newark, our Milford facility is only 16,000 square feet and is not adequate to appropriately serve the citizens of Kent and Sussex Counties. The increase in food distribution and limitations of the Milford facility has pushed our Newark facility to near capacity. It is only through the herculean work of the staff and volunteers of the Milford branch over the past nearly three years that we have been able to serve our friends and neighbors.

In July of 2021, the Food Bank of Delaware purchased 11.5 acres of land from the City of Milford in the Independence Commons business park. Since that purchase, we have contracted with The Whiting-Turner Contracting Company to provide construction management services and The Becker Morgan Group for engineering and architectural design. We are currently building a new 67,000-square-foot facility, and it is our hope that construction will be completed by fall 2023. This new facility is desperately needed in southern Delaware. In FY22, the Food Bank of Delaware distributed 7,872,618 pounds of food in Kent and Sussex Counties, which accounts for 48% of our total distribution.

The Milford facility is currently operating over capacity and does not have the space to effectively serve our community now or in the future. Among the many benefits of the new facility is that it will allow us to:

• expand cold storage to bring in more nutritious perishable foods like meat, dairy products, fruits and vegetables;

• expand warehouse space to increase efficiency and capacity to serve those in need;

• have dedicated space for a Healthy Pantry Center to provide food assistance and community resources directly to our neighbors;

• expand the volunteer room for activities like food sorting and meal box creation to meet our daily production needs;

• have outdoor garden space to grow our own foods and provide educational opportunities for the community and joint programming with our neighbors at the Greater Milford Boys and Girls Club and Delaware Veterans Home; and

• have dedicated space to train Delawareans for careers in warehousing/ logistics, in addition to our successful culinary training program.

According to the Kent Economic Partnership, warehousing and distribution are among the top targeted industries for central Delaware. Similarly, the culinary industry is always in need of new skilled employees. Providing lowincome Delawareans with valuable job skills and supplying a pool of trained talent for these growing sectors with high-paying starting wages is a win-win.

Our work is not possible without the support of our business and government sectors. This new facility will enable us to meet not only our community’s immediate needs but provide opportunities for empowerment and economic mobility so our food assistance services are no longer needed.

Chad Robinson is director of external affairs at the Food Bank of Delaware.