Community Food Bank marks 30 years of effort

To celebrate 30 years of feeding the hungry, the Community Food Bank of Clark County held a special mortgage burning ceremony last month at its latest home: a two-year-old, 50,000-square-foot warehouse at 4190 N. Pecos Road.

The spacious building, filled with freezers and floor-to-ceiling shelves on which literally tons of food are stored, is a far cry from the food bank's original home at the Moulin Rouge on Bonanza Road and Martin Luther King Boulevard.

"We started out in the 1970s behind one door at the old Moulin Rouge," food bank director Bessie Braggs said. "Now we have this building and we are burning the mortgage."

The Community Food Bank of Clark County feeds about 35,000 hungry Southern Nevadans each month through local organizations with food programs, such as Boys & Girls Clubs of Southern Nevada, programs for low-income families and seniors and after-school programs. The food bank distributes food totaling several million pounds annually to more than 100 local charities. It does this with just 13 employees, many of them part-time workers.

"We all wear six different hats," Braggs said.

A combination of county and federal grants have enabled the organization to buy the building, worth $3.1 million, outright. The warehouse has eight loading docks for trucks and two drive-in ramps for picking up food.

The food bank collects money and food donations from "anybody who has anything to give locally," Braggs said. Donations come in from local grocery stores, Wal-Mart, and national manufacturers like Nabisco and Pepsi. The warehouse is lined with boxes of crackers, soda, soups and other food items.

Though Braggs hasn't been with the food bank from the beginning, she has put in two decades with the organization. During that time she has watched the community as well as the organization undergo a lot of changes.

"Twenty years ago, there weren't this many people in Las Vegas," she said. "You knew what section of town was needy. Now, because of the economy, you don't know who needs help. We get calls from people everywhere who are between paychecks."

Another change Braggs has witnessed is in the number of service providers.

"There used to be between 10 and 15 food distribution agencies," she said. "Now there are 65, and we still don't have enough."

Clark County Community Resources Management manager Douglas Bell spoke at the ceremony about how the warehouse makes things easier for the food bank.

"We looked at 17 or more warehouses before this one," he said. "This building seemed like such a natural fit. Food bank employees live and work nearby. The first reaction of everyone we have ever brought in here is 'Wow!'"

One of the food bank's supporters, Ameristar Casinos, Inc., presented Braggs with a check for nearly $20,000 at the event, money that may go toward the food bank's future goals.

"We would like to be financially stable," Braggs said. "We want to establish an endowment fund to keep the building kept up."