Ballard Food Bank moving to a new location

Meghan Walker Ballard

The Ballard Food Bank will be relocating in anticipation of their expiring lease.

Ballard Food Bank Executive Director Jen Muzia says the lease on their current home at 5130 Leary Ave NW, where they’ve operated for the past eight years, expires in October 2021.

In those eight years, they’ve expanded their offerings substantially: they started the community resource hub, which is a program that connects clients with partners who can provide resources such as VA benefits, mental health services, and discounted ORCA cards.

The food bank serves residents from six zip codes all around Northwest Seattle.

“We are more than a food bank. We offer homelessness prevention services as well as a community resource hub that partners with an extensive group of agencies to bring more services to clients all under one roof,” Muzia says. “Our programs are focused on how to help our neighbors access healthy food and achieve self-sufficiency – whatever way they may define that for themselves.  As a food bank and community resource hub, we have really become a one-stop shop.

“All of this means that we have outgrown this space,” Muzia says.

The new site location, which Muzia expects to announce soon, will still serve Ballard, Magnolia, and Queen Anne, plus surrounding neighborhoods.

“Our new space will allow us to grow our food bank and community resource hub to better serve our neighbors throughout northwest Seattle,” Muzia says. The new center will host their market-style food bank, community resource hub, kitchen, and garden, and will also provide job training in various areas.

“Depending on funding commitments, the site could have capacity to host more nonprofits in the community as tenants – beyond the community hub work we already do.”

Muzia says they’re finalizing details on their new location, and expect to be able to announce the news as early as next week — we’ll keep you posted.

Photo from Ballard Food Bank’s website

15 thoughts to “Ballard Food Bank moving to a new location”

  2. Silently praying it’s not on the 40 route anymore so maybe some of the troubling riders won’t be on there. Some amazingly uncool stuff goes down with folks who get on and off at that stop. Feed them, absolutely. No one should go hungry. But not having someone pee in the seat next to me, wave a pocket knife/bike pump/cap gun in the air by my seat (seen all this and more), etc etc etc…will be a nice change.

    1. wave a pocket knife/bike pump/cap gun in the air by my seat

      I hope you called the police. Brandishing a weapon in public, especially on the bus, is an arrestable offense.

      1. You bet I did, for the pocket knife. And I told the bus driver, too. Neither resulted in any action I am aware of. The guy with the gun got yelled at by some other riders and he smiled and said it was a fake and proved it by firing it into the air…caps. So I didn’t bother phoning that in. I just stopped riding the bus after that.

  3. The stretch between the Food Bank and Commons Park/St Luke’s is a hobo junkie corridor.
    Really stupid to ruin the entire neighborhood with this nonsense. All your service workers live outside of town for the most part but the social justice freaks let the degenerate druggies camp in city and feed them. Be sure to clean up their discarded crap for Earth Day, Cat Moms!

    Any reasonable city would put all this nonsense down in an industrial area, force the nonprofits to hire security and patrol with police. DUH

      1. Labeling honesty as hatred will serve you liberals even less than the last 3yrs of bad choices. I wouldn’t keep it up if you want to win back some of your working base.

    2. The stretch between the Food Bank and Commons Park/St Luke’s is a hobo junkie corridor.

      Now I’m all but convinced you neither live in Ballard or have ever even been to Ballard with that description.

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