Operation Food Search plans to invest $10 million into the programming and facilities at its St. Louis County campus.
Most of the investment will pay for upgrades to the food bank’s building and equipment, said Operation Food Search President and CEO Kristen Wild. It includes more than doubling the space where the nonprofit can store shelf-stable food and nearly doubling the cold and freezer storage for perishable items, she said.
“Our goal is to improve the amount of fresh, perishable, nutritious food that we’re distributing to the community,” Wild said. “And sometimes we’ve had to turn away food donations or we’ve had to rent off-site storage or host a [refrigerated] trailer.”
This build-out of Operation Food Search’s headquarters includes specific areas where the organization’s teams can prepare and package food for its different programs, she explained.
“Previously we didn’t have designated spaces,” Wild said. “So this is just going to be friendlier to the employees who will have a climate-controlled, clean, designated space to do this work.”
The money also will go to new hydroponic units that grow food as well as a teaching kitchen where members of the community can learn to prepare and cook food, she added. These changes will help the nonprofit expand programming that help residents in the surrounding communities with long-term solutions to hunger, Wild said.
“We know that providing the immediate assistance is crucial — people are not able to afford or access food — so we’re going to continue to do that,” she said. “What we feel is important is to go beyond that, to impact their consumption of healthy food, where they’re able to purchase more, stretch their dollar at the grocery store.”
Its expanded programming Operation Food Search has already been conducted in the community, but now the organization will be able to offer it at its headquarters too, Wild added.
The project is funded through donations to Operation Food Search as well as an $11 million New Markets Tax Credit allocation and a $850,000 federal appropriation signed by President Joe Biden, she said. Wild added that the organization still needs to raise another few million dollars for the project.
The New Markets Tax Credits will cover close to $2 million of the total cost, said Jill Gilbert, general counsel with Smith NMTC Associates, which provided the New Markets Tax Credits services to Operation Food Search. She clarified that it’s not a grant; the organizations that benefit from the sale of these credits still have to bring the majority of funds for their proposed projects.
“There is an investor who purchases those tax credits,” she said. “The amount that they purchase them for, those sale proceeds from the tax credits, then go into the project.”
U.S. Bancorp is one of them, providing a $3.4 million equity investment in the New Markets Tax Credits associated with Operation Food Search's investment, said U.S. Bancorp Impact Finance Vice President William Carson.
“We look forward to seeing the expansion take shape in support of the OFS mission to address food insecurity in our community,” he said.
This tax credit program was established in 2000 to incentivize investment in low-income communities, Gilbert explained. Operation Food Search meets that criteria, being in an opportunity zone and a food desert, she said.
“It’s a natural [fit] because of the reach that it has in the region,” Gilbert said. “I think the pandemic [has] really shown a light on food insecurity.”
Jeff Colona, director of the Heartland Regional Investment Fund, agrees. His organization is a subsidiary of the St. Louis Economic Development Partnership, and the local community development entity that can allocate New Markets Tax Credits.
“Knowing that they impact over 200,000 individuals every month and knowing what we can do to expand that it feels good,” he said. “It lined up with our allocation agreement and it felt right”
Colona said another consideration from his organization is how many quality jobs a project can create. Operation Food Search plans to add 15 full-time employees to its current staff of 42.
Wild said she hopes the overall construction associated with this investment will be completed this fall. The organization’s operations continue through the construction, though, she added.
“Hunger doesn’t take a holiday, hunger doesn’t take a break,” Wild said. “We need to keep providing for the community no matter what we’re doing to this building.”
