Cambridge Food Bank having trouble finding new home

The Cambridge Food Bank is redoubling their efforts to find a new place after a prospective home didn’t fit the bill. CTV’s Ashley Bacon explains why.

The Cambridge Food Bank is once again searching for a permanent home after the building they were hoping to move into slipped through their fingers.

The organization has been in its current space, at 54 Ainslie Street South, since 2001. But growing demand means they’ve had to look at other locations.

“We outgrew this building a number of years ago,” said Cambridge Food Bank CEO Dianne McLeod. “It’s just gotten increasingly difficult with the growing community need. We were having difficulties when we were serving 800 families a month, and now we’re serving over 2,000 families a month.”

With boxes piled to the roof, volunteers have been carting products from one room to the next.

Finding a new home, however, has proven to be difficult.

“We’ve been searching for a building for almost five years now, and we thought we found one that was going to fit the bill perfectly,” McLeod explained. “Unfortunately, the numbers just didn’t make sense for us.”

Tony Johal, a broker with Twin City Remax, said the food bank’s needs are specific and that makes finding a new location more challenging.

“If we’re looking in that one central spot, where I believe it kind of touches Hespeler, Preston and Galt, we’re dealing with limited options and it can get very expensive,” he said. “Especially if the only option seems to be a lease, because there’s very little options to purchase.”

For McLeod, the space must meet some very important requirements.

“There needs to be a bus stop close by. Many of the people who come to the food bank use the bus and it needs to have a loading dock area and parking. We’re looking for anywhere between 20-25,0000 square feet of space and everything else, we can make work.”

She hopes someone in the community is sitting on a property, just waiting for the right buyer.

“I’m hopeful that somebody watching this broadcast will see this message and think yes, I want to be part of something great, which is the Cambridge Food Bank, and will either think about selling a building, maybe now or in the future, and will reach out to us or maybe they want to make a contribution to our building fund,” McLeod said.

A new fundraising campaign is set to launch at the end of May with the goal of raising enough to offset the purchase cost of their next location, when the right space opens up.