Staff estimate project to be finished in early 2027; Battaglia calls it a ‘long-term investment’

ACCESS, the community action agency for Jackson County, is wrapping up final preparations ahead of a campus renovation that will involve remaking its Medford headquarters, adding a food bank warehouse and demolishing and building a two-story office building.

The objective of the renovation is to operate in one unified space, with planners expecting the project to improve efficiency and benefit the community and the agency alike. 

“The driving factor for why we made this decision for the renovation is that over the course of the last three or four years, ACCESS has grown exponentially,” said Kellie Battaglia, chief advancement officer for ACCESS.

Starting with COVID, then the Almeda and South Obenchain fires, the community action agency has fulfilled a more-needed role for the Rogue Valley community in recent years, Battaglia said. 

“We’ve really outgrew our campus, so what we had to do is we’ve got staff renting office space in various spaces … for a collaborative, client-centered experience, that’s not ideal,” she added. 

The project will include renovating ACCESS’s current building at 3630 Aviation Way in Medford to increase office space and add private participant intake rooms as well as demolishing the group’s current structure nearby on Lear Way to build a 16,797-square-foot, two-story office building. It will also include transforming the current Olsrud Family Nutrition Center on Cardinal Avenue into a 11,891-square-foot food bank warehouse. 

“Making a long-term investment in our campus is something that’s an asset to our organization and community, because a community action agency is at the core of human services for any community across the country,” Battaglia said. 

A particular feature of the renovation that Battaglia is looking forward to seeing will be a new food pantry on site, which will be an amenity ACCESS never had on campus before.

“It’ll have better freezer capacity and dry storage; we have 30 food pantries throughout the county and we give out 4.5 million pounds of food a year,” she said. 

ACCESS will self-fund the $11 million project without using donations, utilizing a loan that will cost roughly the same as the organization’s current rent, according to planners. 

“We have underfunded programs like the food bank and we didn’t want to remove those funds for building,” Battaglia said, adding, “it’s all about the clients and prioritizing our programs and services. It’s really important for the community.” 

Construction is slated to start in November 2025, and the project is expected to wrap up by January 2027. 

During that time, all ACCESS services will continue without disruption.

More than 40,000 individuals are aided by ACCESS each year.

“With the main building, what we really want to do is a client-centered experience, that helps provide and treat clients with dignity and respect, a sense of safety and a sense that they can share their story, tell us about their needs and feel treated with dignity and confidentiality,” Battaglia said. “Someone struggling with energy bills might also need help with food and with other services to help them become stable, and having those spaces is important.” 

ACCESS is a nonprofit started in 1976 that provides food, warmth, shelter and other essential services to Jackson County’s low-income families, seniors, children, veterans and people with disabilities.

The organization helps residents in a variety of ways such as aiding in finding affordable housing, healthy food and offering free and loaned medical equipment. 

To learn more about ACCESS and its programs, visit accesshelps.org. 

Reach reporter James Sloan at jsloan@rv-times.com.