The Talent Food Project and ACCESS provide a helping hand to members of the community in need. Now, they need a helping hand of their own.

An April fire in the city-owned Talent Town Hall damaged the volunteer-run organization’s space for storing and distributing nonperishable food items that are collected the second Saturday of even-numbered months. It’s forced organizers to look for a new space in Talent while collected bags are sent to food banks in Phoenix and Ashland, where many Talent residents go to get supplies.

“We haven’t found a place. Storing food is tricky,” Tammy Wilder, volunteer ACCESS food pantry manager in Talent, told the Rogue Valley Times. “Until we find something for good, we won’t be able to distribute food in Talent that we collect from the town residents.”

Other Rogue Valley towns, including Ashland, Phoenix, Medford, Central Point, Eagle Point and Jacksonville, have green bag programs. ACCESS and the Talent Food Project cooperate in meeting the food needs of Talent residents.

On Aug. 10, 200 bags were collected by volunteers, who spread out around Talent in their vehicles and picked up donated items off people’s porches.  

But that number was down from the usual 230 to 270, Wilder said. She told the Times the decrease was likely attributed to people being on vacation or having gotten out of the habit. The Talent Food Project canceled the June drive, meanwhile, because it lacked a place for the items.

“Obviously, we miss our site,” said volunteer Glenn Berk, who has been helping unload and tally bags brought by neighborhood coordinators since the program began in 2010. “We are hoping by next time to have a facility.”

The next Talent Food Project is scheduled for Saturday, Oct. 12, which gives the community time to come up with a solution. In the meantime, there is no lack of enthusiasm among Talent residents to help their fellow citizens — there are 17 neighborhood coordinators who pick up the filled bags from 300 Talent donors enrolled in the program. 

The April 17 basement fire occurred in a space that ACCESS leased from the city for $1 a year to store food and equipment, the Times reported. The incident happened just four days after the April 13 collection brought in about 4,000 pounds of food, and the fire damaged all collected items beyond salvage.

Two refrigerators and two freezers were lost, along with a banner that announced the drive. Canopies were salvaged through extreme cleaning, and ACCESS was able to reclaim shopping carts it uses to distribute food.

Besides losing the storage space, ACCESS also lost use of the Talent Town Hall main floor as a distribution space for the food every Thursday. From May through June, the group used the parking lot next to Talent Town Hall to distribute food from ACCESS’s warehouse, but repair work on the building forced the closure of that site.

Use of the Town Hall as a future site for ACCESS is uncertain, City Manager Gary Milliman told the Times. A pre-fire assessment of the building already showed a need for major renovations and repairs, and the city is looking into ways to fund those.

As work continues on finding a new site for ACCESS, there are other options for people in need of food. Rogue Food Unites offers a food bank operation in the parking lot of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival Production Facility at 408 Talent Ave. from 4 to 6 p.m. on Thursdays. There are no barriers for recipients.

ACCESS food distribution will return to Talent in October, when one of the agency’s mobile food pantries will set up in the parking lot next to the city’s community center from 4 to 5:30 p.m. on Mondays.

The Times reported that Talent City Council on Aug. 7 directed Milliman to submit a $1.5-million Community Development Block Grant application to secure a building for a community services center. A 4,000-square-foot space previously used by Asante on Talent Avenue is being considered. If the grant is approved, plans call for ACCESS to have a space.

Both ACCESS and the Talent Food Project have approached building owners in the city about storage and distribution possibilities. So far, no one has offered, but this should be a community priority so the program can continue to succeed. Ideally, the space would be close to public transit and have parking nearby.

Anyone with potential space for the operation can email talentfoodpantry@gmail.com. More information on the project can be found at talentfoodproject.org.