The Greater Cleveland Food Bank opened its community resource center last month, which means the days of its Muni Lot food distribution are coming to an end next week.
When the COVID-19 pandemic started, the food bank began distributing food to long lines of cars every other Thursday in the Lakefront Municipal Parking Lot in Downtown Cleveland. But the food bank is moving away from the pandemic-era distribution. Last month, it opened an approximately 20,000-square-foot resource center that replicates a grocery store shopping experience.
The resource center is fully operational and can handle the demand that was taken care of at the Muni Lot, said Greater Cleveland Food Bank Produce Partnerships Manager Vince Cushman.
“You can go inside and pick and choose," he said. "It’s just like going to the grocery store, and you can go in and pick up enough food for your family there."
At the Muni Lot, products and amounts are predetermined to streamline the distribution process.
Rosemarie Boland was in the Muni Lot line on Thursday. She’s looking forward to being able to get exactly what she needs at the resource center.
“I’m kind of glad that it’s going to make it to the point where you just have to just go to one center," Boland said. "You come there. You park your car. You get when you need, and then you leave.”
The need for the food bank’s resources grew “tremendously” after the pandemic started, Cushman said. A normal Muni Lot distribution served about 2,500 families and would have 80 to 150 volunteers at each distribution, he said.
Thursday’s distribution had about 1,000 cars lined up to receive groceries.
Vickie Adamus from Highland Heights has been a food bank volunteer for almost 10 years. She said a part of her is sad to see the Muni Lot distribution process end because of how fun it is for her.
“It’s an enjoyable time, but ... it was a temporary fix,” Adamus said. “It’s time to transition to our CRC, which is a beautiful, beautiful place and offers a lot more services than we can provide down here for people.”
Several other nonprofits have space in the resource center that people can utilize including the Legal Aid Society and Ohio Means Jobs.
“It’s a full-turn center that people that folks can go to and get a lot of resources,” Cushman said.
The food bank opened a new office on Coit Road in Cleveland and turned its old office space on Waterloo Road into the resource center.
