Keystone Community Services plans to open a new Community Food Site in St. Paul’s Midway neighborhood in 2023. This new site will increase Keystone’s capacity to provide food to our neighbors. We invite you to review the information below about the new site.
Keystone purchased a 20,000 square foot building on University Avenue near Fairview Avenue. We are in the beginning stages of planning for this new community food site that will bring all of our basic needs programming into one location, including Foodmobile and crisis services.
Why a new facility?
This new site will provide us with the opportunity to significantly expand our food and crisis services for people living in our service area. This project is part of our 2020-2024 strategic plan and we have accelerated our timeline to complete this project due to the pandemic and increased need in the community.
The site will have many features that will help Keystone increase efficiency and serve more people, including:
- A much larger shopping area for participants to select foods that meet their household’s needs
- Increased capacity to receive and warehouse food
- Large volunteer spaces to tap the enthusiasm of corporate and community groups
- Spaces for staff to meet residents privately to discuss crisis assistance and make connections to other resources
Why is Keystone creating a new community food site?
Put simply, we need more space to provide more services to a larger number of people in need. The new 20,000-square-foot site will support an increasing number of people turning to us for food and crisis support.
More people are turning to Keystone for food support. Groceries, gasoline, and other essentials are becoming more expensive and for many of our neighbors affording basic grocery items stretches their budgets beyond their limits. We are anticipating the need in the community will continue to increase in 2022 and 2023 as the economic impact of the pandemic is disproportionately impacting low-income people and it will take them longer to recover lost wages and overall household income. Our new site will give us the space to meet increased needs.
By the end of 2023, we expect to be supporting over 50,000 people with food and crisis supports.
