Staff and volunteers at the Rock County Food Shelf will soon move to their new location at 209 West Maple Street once building renovations are complete.
Food Shelf board member Katie Baustian shared architect drawings of the building showing how it will be utilized.
“It will be like having a storefront where people can enter with dignity,” she said. “We won’t be tucked away in a church basement.”
The drawings were provided free of charge through the Foundation for Essential Needs, a Minneapolis non-profit that works with organizations to improve food distribution in communities.
“They came down to see our building and were pretty excited about our space, especially the back room with the overhead door,” Baustian said.
She said the board is grateful for the foundation’s expertise. “This is what they do; they work with food shelves on utilizing space for shelving and flow.”
The 40-by-46-foot building is about 50 percent bigger than the food shelf’s current space in the Methodist Church basement and will allow for coolers to accept meat, produce and dairy donations.
The organization has so far raised more than $145,000 toward the $225,000 needed for renovation.
The work includes new doors and windows, shelving, a bathroom, commercial refrigerators and freezers, insulated walls and a heating, ventilation and air-conditioning unit.
Baustian said the Foundation for Essential Needs is connecting the Rock County Food Shelf with a donated cooler and other resources. “They can connect us with a lot things we weren’t even aware of,” she said.
Funds vs food — volunteers work to reduce stock ahead of move
Meanwhile, Food Shelf Board President Mary Gehrke said the current church location continues to serve hungry families and individuals through donations of food and funds.
“We appreciate the giving tradition of our county and wouldn’t be able to continue this ministry without those donations,” Gehrke said.
Now, she asks that community focus on financial donations rather than actual food deliveries ahead of the move to Maple Street.
“We plan to minimize our stock to make the transition a little easier,” Gehrke said. “Our new location will have a donation area available for drop-offs after we move.”
The Luverne Area Community Foundation is facilitating the fundraising campaign, and financial donations can be dropped off at or mailed to LACF at PO Box 623, Luverne, MN 56156.
“When we started fundraising, we thought, ‘Oh my gosh, we’ll never get there,’ and now we have people who have pledged donations for five years out,” she said.
“The Luverne Area Community Foundation has been wonderful about managing that for us. … This is a community where people work as a team together.”
Gehrke said she’s enjoyed working with the city and also with generous community members to see the project through.
Background
The city of Luverne purchased the former dental office in 2017 for $36,000 and the blighted lot next door (on the corner near NAPA Automotive) for $32,500.
The corner lot was razed and seeded with grass, and the brick building was deemed in solid shape and added to the city’s stock of property for potential development.
Baustian’s husband, Luverne Mayor Pat Baustian, and their children volunteered at the food shelf over the holidays, giving the mayor a first-hand glimpse of the space shortages in the Methodist Church basement.
“I used to say to Pat, ‘If I win the lottery, we’re going to build a new building for the Food Shelf,” Katie Baustian said. “And he said to me one day, ‘Katie I think we have a building you might be able to use.’”
The mayor proposed using the building as a food shelf to the council last fall.
“It really opened my eyes to the need out there,” he told council members, who unanimously supported the arrangement.
The city’s relationship with the food shelf would be similar to its arrangements with other non-profit organizations that operate in city properties like the Palace Theatre, Redbird Field and Blue Mound Ice Arena.
Luverne Building and Zoning Director Chad McClure is serving as the general contractor for the work on the building, which the city is leasing to the Food Shelf for $1 per year.
Information about the move and about donations is updated regularly on the Food Shelf Facebook page, Rock County Food Shelf.