Monday, Jun. 22, 2009

Benton City getting a bigger, better food bank

By Drew Foster, Herald staff writer

BENTON CITY -- It was 12:15 p.m., 15 minutes after the Benton City Food Bank opened, and about a dozen people were waiting outside the building's doors.

The Benton City Food Bank has operated out of the wooden, red building on Ninth Street for almost 12 years, after a fire claimed its previous home and its initial start in two city churches in the 1980s. Before the Food Bank even moved in to the Ninth Street building, it had outgrown the downtown location.

"It was never big enough for us, we've always needed a bigger building," said Food Bank board member Bea Baker.

After shuffling from location to location for nearly 25 years, the nomadic Benton City Food Bank finally will have a permanent place in mid-August when a new building on 10th Street, right around the corner from its current location, is completed.

The Benton City Food Bank is run by the Tri-Cities Food Bank, which also has locations in Kennewick and Richland, where the food banks resemble grocery stores. The new Benton City Food Bank should take on the same appearance, offering clients the opportunity to walk aisles, filling their shopping carts with exactly what they want.

In the current setup, clients fill out a list of what they need. While they may check "soup," they can't specify chicken noodle, clam chowder or cream of mushroom. They get whatever the volunteers who run the facility happen to pick up and put in their box.

"We don't have time to choose," said Karen Jeffers, site manager.

Baker hopes the new Benton City Food Bank provides an extra sense of dignity along with the expanded choices.

"If I were a recipient, I think I would appreciate that a lot more," she said of clients being able to choose their food. "I wouldn't want the grocery store to pack my cart."

One man standing in line Thursday, who didn't want to be identified, said he's looking forward to the new food bank's larger selection. He said he is now employed, but began using the food bank about two years ago when he struggled to find steady employment in Benton City. His story is a common one, according to Tri-Cities Food Bank Executive Director Art King.

The Benton City Food Bank, which is only open Thursdays, serves about 90 people each time its doors open, King said. Richland and Kennewick, which are open Monday through Friday, serve between 50 and 65 people each day. Despite Benton City's roughly 3,000-person population, the number of clients at its food bank illustrates the city's need, King said.

He attributed the large number of clients to Benton City's elderly residents and low median income and migrant worker population. In order to use the food banks, clients must provide proof of residence and migrant workers must show which farm they're working for. No income information is necessary.

According to 2000 Census data, the most recent data using a common methodology, Benton City had an annual median household income of $33,636, compared to $53,092 in Richland and $41,213 in Kennewick. The data also showed that in 2000, 12 percent of Benton City families lived below the poverty level, while 10 percent did in Kennewick and 6 percent did in Richland.

"I think we have a lot of individuals in our community that really need the food," Baker said. "I see a lot of people trying, working and just can't make it. Others are just down on their luck."

King has seen the number of clients at the Benton City Food Bank increase in the last 18 months, although he couldn't put a figure on it. He said rising gas prices spurred the initial spike. When gas prices began to drop, he suspects the recession kept people coming back. However, he said numbers have slightly decreased in the past few weeks, indicating it may be a sign the economy is improving.

The Tri-Cities Food Bank is volunteer-run, from King on down. It serves 12 to 14 tons of food a week to clients, up from about eight tons in 2005. Last year, Tri-Cities Food Bank served about 95,000 people, King said.

King's not sure if a new food bank in Benton City will attract more clients, but it will definitely be able to serve more people, he said. The new Benton City facility also will be able to store food for the Tri-Cities Food Bank's other two locations, which have run out of storage space in the past.

The new $500,000 food bank will be 50 by 100 feet, or about three to four times larger than Benton City's current food bank.

"It's going to be perfect," Jeffers said last week, surrounded by tubs of corn meal, rice, oats and beans, and bags of bread, buns and bananas as clients lugged full boxes through the food bank toward the parking lot. "This building, we've outgrown it."