A community hub for food and clothes has secured additional money for its future home.
The North Liberty Community Pantry was awarded an additional $150,000 in American Rescue Plan Act money during Tuesday’s North Liberty City Council meeting, inching closer to erecting a new, 10,500-square-foot, $4 million building.
The pantry will receive $250,000 in total from the city and continue to fundraise the remaining money needed to construct the new building, Pantry Executive Director Ryan Bobst told the Press-Citizen. The new centralized location at 350 W. Penn Street is a considerable size increase from the pantry’s current 2,500-square-foot facility on the west side of town.
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Bobst said the pantry initially asked the North Liberty City Council for $100,000 as it considered purchasing a smaller plot of land with a construction cost of about $1.6 million.
Once officials determined the pantry needed more space than that, at a cost of $2.6 million, the pantry asked the city for $2,500 more for the 2,500 additional square feet.