THUNDER BAY — Renovations at Thunder Bay’s Regional Food Distribution Association (RFDA) are well underway.
As part of its Hands Up mandate, the at least 6.9 million project will add a training room, rental space, worldwide streaming technology, an education place and more to the RFDA.
Volker Kromm, the RFDA’s executive director, said it had to go through a lot of hoops to secure the funding before starting and is now in the position of waiting for all those funds to come in.
The RFDA also has a Building Hope campaign to raise $1.5 to $2 million from the local community and region for the project.
“I’m just really excited that we’re getting this underway and the progress is phenomenal,” said Kromm.
“To see it come from a drawing to actually see the footprint on the ground and then the walls going up. Now we have the blue laminated beams are up. It’s really looking like a space and … seeing it come together is important.”
While the RFDA was initially in a bit of a panic about getting some of the renovations started and underway before the coming construction season, he said the critical pieces of the concrete pad, the steel and the roofing are now complete.
“To be able to pour in January might been unheard of in other years, but we’re very fortunate. We had to apply heat and such, but really we are in a really good position,” said Kromm.
“So, now we’re finishing off the roof. The HVAC is going in and when that is all completed from the top down, we’ll be putting in the rest of the walls and closing it in.”
Moving slightly ahead of the curve has also allowed the RFDA to have all of the supplies either already on-site or purchased before the tariffs, notwithstanding any additional supplies.
April Mercier, the RFDA’s office manager, said they are also really anxious to be finished so that they can increase operations.
“The whole goal is to be able to feed more people so finish up so that we can start new programming, start educational programming and ultimately reach our goal,” said Mercier.
Once complete, the RFDA will combine the processing room, meat room and commercial kitchen to process more healthy nutritious food locally and across Canada.
It will also have a wild game room for First Nation workshops to bring in traditional foods and a training kitchen for classes and groups to learn at different stations about food security.
“The great part about the kitchen is we’re going to have better connectivity to be able to allow us to stream some of these educational services. So, for those who can’t get here in person to learn, we still have the ability to provide the education,” said Mercier.
The open space will also allow different groups to hold educational workshops, host cooking classes, rent to start and operate a small business and hold events, small weddings or workshops.
Mercier said this would allow them to support local in the future and hopefully generate some revenue to remain viable.
She added that the expansion will also allow them to process more food into usable formats to benefit end users ultimately.
In response to the tariffs, the RFDA has begun working with Food Banks Canada and Feed Ontario to create a network to allow organizations to direct food that can no longer be processed to other partners, who can process that food and “ultimately get it to the people who need it.”
Kromm added it is a really important step for them from the education side and also capacity.
“Much like college does, we’ll be able to introduce some of those skill sets to the younger populations, different demographics, and so it’ll be a real cultural space, a place where we come together,” said Kromm.
He said the reason that the RFDA is embarking on this expansion is because it is already at capacity.
"We were already struggling to keep the amount of food we needed to support all of our members and then continue to be able to provide food to northern communities. So, if we were already struggling before how will we address this with the increased costs?" said Kromm.
He said he also thinks it’s also a place where many more volunteers will come.
If all things go well and there aren’t too many more holdups, Kromm is very optimistic with the current schedule and all the work done during the winter time, renovations will be complete at the end of August.
