Libby Food Pantry faces temporary shutdown even as demand rises

In a room cramped by shelves laden with dry goods, volunteers juke and jive around one another on a typical Tuesday morning as they fill paper bags with packaged foods.

From there, the reused grocery store bags head toward an unassuming rear entrance of the defunct Asa Wood Elementary School, where a second team of volunteers helps load them into the line of vehicles idling in the snow and ice covered parking lot.

Last month alone, the Libby Food Pantry fed 206 families, between 400 and 500 people, said Chloe Adamson, president of the organization. January was one of the busiest months in the group's history.

But come May, those families will need to look elsewhere. The pantry, which has operated out of the old school for years, will make way for the conversion of the property into an assisted living facility.

“Currently, it looks like Libby Food Pantry will shut down in May for an indeterminate amount of time unless we find a temporary location,” said volunteer Keith Ivers in an interview last week. “The only thing would prevent that would be if manna fell from heaven and we got a $250,000 check in a few days.”

Ivers has spearheaded the effort to find a new home for the pantry, lobbying local school and government officials for help with a solution. Word that the company purchasing the property from the Libby Public School District wanted the pantry out, which formally came down last week, was expected. Ivers just hoped they could have found a new home in the meantime.

The sale of Asa Wood was a long time coming. School officials first began mulling the idea in 2019 when an organization based in the Flathead expressed interest in buying the property. That deal fell through after the district realized that cleanup of the site would consume most of the profit of the sale.

But the idea of selling the land, adjacent to U.S. Highway 2 and Idaho Avenue, took hold. Using a federal EPA grant designed to cleanup properties where hazardous material stood in the way of redevelopment, school officials forged ahead with plans to rid the district of the building.

By July, a prospective buyer emerged. In September, school officials announced Compass Health Inc. of California had agreed to purchase the land for $730,000.

Ivers and his fellow volunteers had launched a campaign to find a new space since that summer. While the original redevelopment deal with the Flathead group would have seen the pantry stay put, it was clear the nonprofit needed a new home.

In June, he appeared before the Lincoln County Board of Commissioners and laid out the group’s quandary. Just as Asa Wood was primed for redevelopment so was the rest of the region’s vacant property. A boon for so many, the red-hot real estate market presented another challenge to the food pantry.

“All of those buildings that have been sitting empty for 10 to 20 years now have a great deal of value to their owners,” Ivers told commissioners. “There are not many facilities out there that we may be able to move into.”

He noted that the pantry’s hulking freezers — and their associated electrical consumption needs — also proved a challenge in finding a location.

Commissioners pledged to help if and when possible. Earlier this year, County Commissioner Brent Teske (D-1) outlined a plan to give the pantry $15,000 in American Rescue Plan Act dollars to fund an architectural review of the vacant JC Clubhouse at Pioneer Park. Ivers said Teske initially pitched the clubhouse as a possible new home.

Although appreciative of the offer of the county building, Ivers recently learned that the cost to rehabilitate the structure and outfit it to meet the pantry’s needs was insurmountable. Even if the group came up with the money, the architects that looked over the building could not guarantee how much life the former clubhouse had left in it.

“The architect said that when you’re done with this you’re going to have a 60-year-old building in good condition, but with an uncertain future,” Ivers said.

“Done with this,” according to Ivers, included repairing the roof, replacing the floor, installing a cement pad to hold the group’s stock of canned goods, redo the electrical and perform foundation work.

“[The architect] planted the seeds of the thought that maybe it would be better to start with something new, which makes me feel bad,” Ivers said. “The commissioners have offered the use of the building, though we would be responsible for any renovations …

If somebody offers you something free and you turn around and say that’s not good enough … it makes you sound like an ingrate.”

Ivers has since looked into the cost of erecting a pole frame building. For that to work, though, the pantry needs a piece of property.

Ivers reported speaking with county commissioners in recent days about available land. They directed him to inquire with Libby City Hall as well, which he did. When city councilors met Feb. 7, the pantry’s request — aimed at land near Riverfront Park — prompted a delicate discussion.

While happy to help the pantry, city councilors hinted that the park, which sits adjacent to the Kootenai River, might not be a fit with their previous plans for the area. When Mayor Peggy Williams suggested the request go before the parks committee, City Councilor Kristin Smith said the pantry might fit better elsewhere in the city.

As a member of the team that developed a plan for the park, she recalled envisioning small-scale retail activity by the waterfront — an ice cream shop or café.

“We have that gorgeous pavilion and we want some architectural design standards for the buildings that go there, which might be out of the budget for a food pantry,” Smith said.

Still, she backed the idea of the city helping to find a new home for the group. When City Councilor Gary Beach hinted at nearby Lincoln County Port Authority land, he was met with support.

Smith said that area, near City Hall, would put clients of the pantry in close proximity to other services. And it would be better accessible than Rivefront Park by foot.

“Folks could double up on city business and obtaining the food,” she said. “It’s much more convenient than driving over the viaduct.”

Ivers took news of the previous night’s discussion in stride while working with his fellow volunteers at the pantry on Feb. 8. By 10 a.m., cars already had begun to line up outside the entrance. Port authority land made sense to him as well, but the clock was ticking.

Adamson, who took short breaks to talk about the pantry’s day-to-day operations, said the organization has seen increasingly larger families turn to them for food.

“It’s been up,” she said. “Bigger families. A lot of bigger families are coming in.”

And it’s the thought of them that keeps Ivers up at night.

“If we have to shut down for an indeterminate amount of time, what happens to those folks?” he asked last week. “[That] makes us feel even worse.”