Dayton food bank opens new community hub with health, education services

A new 12,000-square-foot building is set to turn The Foodbank Inc. in Dayton from a storage and distribution operation into something closer to a neighborhood service center. The project will open with a block party on June 25, the same milestone the nonprofit is using to mark its 50th anniversary in the Miami Valley.

The facility is being pitched as a place where food assistance sits next to health and education services, not apart from them. The Foodbank says the building will include exam rooms, classrooms, a commercial kitchen, workforce development space and an on-site probation office in the 45417 ZIP code. That matters because the organization is no longer just handling pallets and pickup schedules. It is trying to house the kinds of supports that can keep a household stable long after a pantry visit ends.

The money behind it underscores the scale of that shift. A $2 million federal grant helped finance the $5 million project, which The Foodbank first broke ground on in fall 2024. In its 2024 annual report, the nonprofit said the building was designed to support efforts to employ justice-involved citizens and shorten food lines, a reminder that anti-hunger work now overlaps with reentry, job placement and basic health access.

Michelle Riley, The Foodbank’s chief executive, said the organization hosted more than 853,000 client visits last fiscal year and distributed more than 17 million pounds of food. It also worked with 120 partner agencies across Greene, Montgomery and Preble counties. The Foodbank says it serves as the infrastructure for more than 110 member food pantries, community kitchens and shelters, making the new building less a standalone expansion than a hub for the wider network already moving through it.

That network has grown inside a broader regional operation. The Foodbank says it has served the Miami Valley for 50 years, is the only food bank of its kind in the area, and is part of Feeding America’s network of 206 food banks and the Ohio Association of Foodbanks. Its program pages also point to a Mobile Pantry Program for high-need areas without a local pantry, along with an urban garden that has produced more than 85 tons of fresh produce since 2013.

For A Simple Gesture, the Dayton buildout is a useful marker of where the sector is headed. Food recovery groups are under pressure to do more than move surplus food. The Foodbank’s new model shows how buildings, staffing and partner coordination are becoming strategic tools, not just overhead, as hunger work expands into health, workforce and navigation services.