Until recently, the Freestore Foodbank's operations were scattered across Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky.
But a new 224,000-square foot facility is consolidating many of those efforts under one roof.
The Freestore's Community Resource, Workforce Training and Distribution Center at 3401 Rosenthal Way in Riverside officially opens Wednesday, June 7, with a public ribbon cutting and open house at 11 a.m. Another open house will take place between 4 p.m. and 7 p.m.
The facility combines three classrooms for the Freestore's Cincinnati Cooks and LIFT (Logistics, Inventory Management, Facilities Management and Transportation) job training programs, warehouse space, volunteer facilities and other functions. Previously, those programs were spread out at separate facilities.
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The Freestore will still operate some of its other locations, including one in Over-the-Rhine on Liberty Street. But Marketing and Communications Manager Nicki Roe says the new Riverside building will help the Freestore coordinate its job training programs as well as the almost 38 million meals it distributes and the 14,000 volunteers who work there yearly.
Construction was paid for by a multi-year, $32 million fundraising campaign. Planning for the new facility began about seven years ago, Roe says.
"In order for us to better serve our community, we needed to be together," she says. "So the plans started for how we could make that work, and seven years and COVID later, here we are."