The city of Statesboro, with support also from the Bulloch County government, recently bought a 3.75-acre site on Northside Drive West on behalf of The Food Bank Inc. for the construction of a new Statesboro Food Bank building.

Officially city property for now, the land on the westbound side between the Miller Street and West Parrish Street intersections was purchased June 27 from Mark Holzman and Walter Holzman for $240,000. That money comes out of the $1 million in federal American Rescue Plan Act cash the Bulloch County Board of Commissioners and Statesboro City Council promised last year to create a new home for the Food Bank. Both local boards followed through by approving an intergovernmental agreement June 21 committing $500,000 each from the city’s and the county’s multimillion-dollar ARPA awards to the project.

Officially, the project addresses community “food insecurity,” a federally recognized use of ARPA money.

The land purchase leaves $760,000 for planning and construction. City and county officials say that more money from some other source will be needed to build the kind of building they would like to see, at the expected size of about 8,000 square feet. An opportunity to apply for an additional, special $1 million federal grant through the state was missed last fall when a possible land donation fell through.  Officials don’t know when or if there will be a repeat of the grant opportunity.

Last year, a $2 million cost to plan and build the building was suggested, even if the land had been donated.

Accessible site

But Jodi Brannon, Statesboro Food Bank operations manager, sees the purchased location as nearly ideal. It will keep the Food Bank on Statesboro’s West Side, which she observes has “the lion’s share of the depressed neighborhoods,” and unlike one previously considered site, it doesn’t have access just from Northside Drive, which is part of U.S.  Highway 80, but also from Parrish and Miller Streets.

“Now we’ll be able to put entrances that won’t be on the highway so you don’t have people walking across Highway 80 to go to a food bank, so I’m real excited,” Brannon said. “And because it’s never been developed, we don’t have a lot of the issues that we might would have otherwise, so I really think it’s going to be perfect.”

Her father, Joe Bill Brannon, died in June 2020 after more than 25 years serving as a Statesboro Food Bank volunteer, much of that time as its full-time, acting director.

Finding a permanent home for the Food Bank had been a goal of his for years, while he and his daughter operated it from various temporary locations. The most recent sites have been provided by the Bulloch County Board of Education under nominal-rent leases, first at the former Sallie Zetterower School until it was sold to become the Statesboro Family YMCA facility. Then in recent years and continuing still, the Food Bank, technically a food pantry that provides food directly to people in need, has occupied a portion of the old Julia P. Bryant School complex.

The school board’s entering real estate a sales contract more than a year ago with a developer who wants to turn the old JPB campus into an apartment community for senior citizens spurred efforts to find a new home for the Food Bank.

Brannon posted a photo of her late father on the Food Bank’s Facebook page June 22, the anniversary of his death, with an announcement of City Council’s approval the night before of the then-pending real estate purchase.

“Dad wanted this more than anything,” she wrote. “Today is hard, but I feel him smiling and thanking all the supporters, big and small.”

City-County input

The county and city support comes with some strings attached. A memorandum of understanding also approved by the county and city elected boards requires the Food Bank to hire an executive director “as soon as possible” and to allow the city and county each to name an “ex officio” but voting member to local charity’s corporate board.

Those members have yet to be appointed, but City Manager Charles Penny and County Manager Tom Couch have been meeting with the Food Bank board for about half a year.

“We’ve been working with them from an operational standpoint, trying to get some things in place which we think will help the board,” Penny said.

He recommended, and Couch concurred, that the Food Bank board should hire an executive director.

“They have the operations and how they serve people (established), but going for a new building and trying to really ramp up and address food insecurities, they need to look at it from a broader perspective, and we think the executive director would help them in doing that,” Penny said.

He said the director should be someone who will work with the volunteers, especially board members, but not defer to them.

“The executive director could do a couple of things, work with the board, make sure that policies that the board sets out a are carried out,” Penny said. “Then they can also lead the effort for constructing a facility, grant writing, fundraising and managing relationships.”

Brannon, currently the Food Bank’s one full-time staff member, said if an executive director is needed to fulfill the city and the county’s expectations, she doesn’t want to stymie the realization of her father’s dream.

But noting that the Food Bank has accomplished much with volunteers and donors, including staying open through the pandemic, she said she also doesn’t want it to become the kind of charity that spends a majority of donated money on administrative salaries.

“We’ve always had, if I had to guess, probably 80 percent of the funds go to food or the distribution of the food, and I’d like for that to stay the same regardless of who they think needs to be at the helm, whether it’s me or somebody else, just as long was people can feel like their funds are being used for the benefit of the Food Bank’s mission,” Brannon said.

Several Food Bank Inc. board members attended the real estate closing June 27 at the Wright & Edwards law office. Attorney Rachel Edwards handled the closing, and Realtor Ronald J. Love was the real estate agent. None of the board members were signers on the deal.

But Larry Colbert, the Food Bank Inc. board chair, signed the memo of understanding with the city and county, with the board’s approval. The agreement requires the board to expand or alter its own membership “to better represent different segments of the community.”

The board is working on that, Colbert reports, and said he also understands the desire of the county and city to name board members.

“It’s only fitting that they have somebody to represent them, because they’ve got a big part in the advancement and the finishing of this project,” he said. “That’s the position that anybody would take when you have a part in the investment, and they can help us address the food insufficiencies, so it’s a win-win for everybody.”

‘A million short’

Neither he nor the city and county managers are predicting a timeline for the building’s construction. The agreement also requires the city and county to cooperate with the Food Bank to apply for any appropriate grant for the building project.

Couch said that based on last year’s cost projections and the expected square footage, the project appears to be about “a million short” of the construction funds needed, without adjusting for this year’s inflation.

“We would definitely need an additional funding source, like a grant,” Couch said.

So far, the Georgia Department of Community Affairs has not announced another round of the special grants, provided from remaining federal pandemic relief money for projects such as food pantries.

“If the third round of that … comes out, hopefully we’ll be poised to do an application, since we have a piece of property with site control,” Couch said.