Atlanta Community Food Bank

Reinvestment Fund financing is helping the Atlanta Community Food Bank construct a new warehouse and distribution facility that will serve metro Atlanta and North Georgia.

This project will expand Atlanta Community Food Bank’s (ACFB) physical and organizational capacity, bringing all distribution, programming, and staff under one roof in a new, 345,000 square foot distribution and headquarters facility.

Approximately one in seven people in ACFB’s service area, which includes 29 counties in metro Atlanta and North Georgia, are food insecure, meaning that they do not have access to enough food for an active, healthy life. ACFB estimates that they currently reach approximately 755,000 people who are food insecure in their region. This project will enable ACFB to “close the meal gap” by 2025 and serve food insecure people that ACFB cannot currently serve. By 2025, ACFB will distribute 50 million lbs of fresh produce, an increase of 3.8x their distribution in 2016; and 115 million meals and 145 million lbs of food, doubling their 2016 distribution.

The project expects to create 100 full time equivalent construction jobs, retain 168 permanent jobs, and create 80 new jobs. ACFB is partnering with First Step Staffing, a Reinvestment Fund borrower, to train and hire people who face barriers to employment including people who are formerly homeless and formerly incarcerated.

Reinvestment Fund provided $8 million in New Markets Tax Credits to the project. Reinvestment Fund worked with PNC Bank, Rural Development Partners, and Kroger Co. who also provided financing for this project. ACFB is in the final stages of raising $32 million in philanthropic support for this new facility project. Without New Markets Tax Credits, ACFB could not raise enough capital to fully fund this project.