On Sept. 18, Oberlin Community Services will move from its current food pantry location at 285 S. Professor St. and transition food distribution operations to its new location at 500 E. Lorain St.
“Everything has been already packed, we are getting all the produce taken care of, all the deliveries are already on the other building,” Suzette Sanchez, food programs coordinator for OCS, said. “So it’s just moving the office stuff … this weekend.”
OCS’s Communications and Development Coordinator Jason Hawk gave a timeline for the moving of the food services. The last food distribution will take place Sept. 15. OCS will be closed and services will be suspended Sept. 18–22 while the organization is moving. On Sept. 25, operations will resume in the new location on 500 E. Lorain Street. With the move, they are increasing their parking capacity from seven spaces to 78. The new location will also include a truck turnaround and loading dock leading into their warehouse. This is expected to improve the efficiency of their services.
When asked about the improvements the new building will yield to OCS, Hawk highlighted two main points: additional parking spaces to reduce waiting lines and increased inventory capacity.
“The biggest headache that we have here, hands down, is parking, which significantly increases waiting time for people picking up food,” Hawk said. “So everything will just be so much smoother. We’ll be able to move people in faster … Hopefully, [people picking up food] will not have to factor in two hours to come to the food pantry anymore.”
Another issue OCS currently faces is inventory capacity. The seven tons of food distributed weekly take up a lot of space. Moving from their 5,600-square-foot footprint at their old location, the new building on Lorain Street gives the organization 27,000 square feet, about 14,000 of which will be dedicated to the pantry and warehouse.
While the move has benefits for OCS, there are also concerns about the accessibility of the new location, which is not connected to a sidewalk.
“Even if we were to build a sidewalk in front of our building, there’s nothing for it to connect to on either side. So, it is a concern,” Hawk said. However, he said that out of all the people who receive services from OCS, “It’s a very small percentage that walk; almost everybody who comes here drives.”
Hawk also told the Review that in the future, OCS hopes to convince the city of Oberlin to dedicate a Lorain County Transport stop to their new building.
Although OCS will start operating in its new location Sept. 25, renovations are still ongoing for office spaces and other parts of the new building, which are not as crucial to the delivery of their services. This means that collaborations with partner organizations will not be conducted this fall. OCS anticipates that those partners can move into the fully renovated office spaces after Jan. 1.
