Renovations – Powell River Food Bank

The place is looking great after months of hard work as well as generous donations from local businesses, which allowed us to:

install new bathroom fixtures (Pete’s Plumbing)
add classy seating (staff of First Credit Union)
refinish walls & floors (RONA Powell River Building Supply)

New emergency lighting was purchased with funds from BC Gaming.

Jurgen built this superb dolly. Makes packing and moving foods so much easier!

Part of our renovations included building new shelves, and setting up a better assembly process for creating hampers.

Hampers made up and ready to go. Bags on the left are for single person households. At the far right are boxes for families of 4 or more.

Up front is looking good too. Map of the world to help us see the bigger picture, next to Gina’s plaque, in memory of her years of dedicated to service to Powell River.

In the back room, walls were cleaned and painted, floor scraped and painted. We also reno’d the bathroom with donated fixtures. What a difference!

Staff of the Powell River First Credit Union pooled their cash donations and bought these new chairs for us.

Savanna’s report from November 2016:

The new shelves are not only functional, but they are beautiful. It makes people feel better when the place looks classy. The work we have done over the 4 months is nothing short of miraculous. All the old freezers, gone, all the junk and old area rugs gone, all the floors cleaned and painted, all the pallets laid down and food stacked in an orderly fashion off the ground.

Table moved, shelves moved, more room for maneuvering, and a general clean up. No more odors in there of old carpet. Although the front carpet still needs to be replaced. There was not enough money in the resolution the board passed for all the things that needed to be done. The cap was $3000 and the shelves were $3000 themselves; never mind the bathroom and carpet.

So, I made a judgment call and got a toilet and sink donated, and got a carpenter to do the work. The floor was falling in and it needed to be done.

Other renovations in the future may be to add a commercial sink in the back area where the produce will be stored and sorted. Other than that, just some moving of the existing shelves and making room for the refrigeration system will be all that is needed to be done. We have had some very positive feedback about the new look at the foodbank.