The United Way of the mid-Willamette Valley receives more donations of household items from retailers in the community than it can handle.CEO Rhonda Wolf hopes that buying the large, northeast Salem warehouse that Marion Polk Food Share plans to soon leave behind will help fix that.  The Food Sh are property, at 1600 Salem Industrial Way N.E., the property is worth $4.7 million, according to property records.  United Way is seeking $2 million from the state legislature this session to pay for about half of the purchase of Marion Polk Food Share’s 30,000-square-foot warehouse property. The food share got state funding last year to move out into a bigger building.The rest of the money would come from the sale of United Way’s current properties, including offices and its current resource center, along with donations and grants, according to Wolf. Rick Gaupo, President of Marion Polk Food Share, said in an emailed statement that his organization supports United Way’s effort to get state money to purchase their building. “They’ve been incredible partners and provide immense value to the Salem community,” Gaupo said. Last year, the center distributed over $15 million worth of goods to over 75 local organizations in the community from its current building, at 1100 Front Street N.E., according to its website, serving more than 270,000 people. At the center, staff and volunteers sort through  a wide range of unused surplus items from large retailers, mostly home items ranging from utensils to furniture, according to Wolf. “You name it, we’ve probably gotten it at some point,” Wolf said.During the Labor Day fires of 2020, the program provided furniture and other home goods to survivors. Some school districts get electronics and fidget toys from the center to use as attendance rewards for students.  Their current facility isn’t large enough to meet growing demand in the community, according to United Way. The facility also doesn’t have loading docks, meaning two staff members have to unload truckloads of boxes by hand.  “It’s not only taxing on the body, but a lot of work,” Wolf said. Heating and cooling the old building is also a struggle.Overall, though, the program has simply outgrown its home, and has been forced to turn goods away, Wolf said. United Way hopes the former Marion Polk Food Share facility can serve as a permanent home for the Community Resource Center and its administrative offices, which are currently based out of a second location.  It would be the largest space yet for a program that began as a once-per-month event in a United Way conference room in 2013. Since its inception, the center has moved several times from the conference room to a 7,000-square-foot space and to temporary spaces, Wolf said. Their current 20,000-square-foot hub has tight quarters and boxes piled in corners, as seen in a recent promotional video. By moving into the food share’s 30,000-square-foot space, United Way also hopes to expand and solidify their “disaster preparedness hub,” something they realized they needed to provide during the events of 2020. They hope to use the new space to create a stockpile of emergency relief items in order to proactively respond to the next crisis. When the pandemic and wildfires of 2020 hit, the center was momentarily caught flat-footed by the surge of need, Wolf said.  “We were able to pull it together. But if we had a full space that we could access full time, that would be great,” she said Because United Way hopes to take over an existing nonprofit space, they expect the transition from one space to the next to be “seamless,” according to a statement. The state legislature, which has been in session since early this month, will disband on March 8. At that time, United Way will know whether the state will fund half the move, Wolf said. Contact reporter Skeet Starr: [email protected]. LOCAL NEWS DELIVERED TO YOU: Subscribe to Salem Reporter and get all the fact-based Salem news that matters to you. Fair, accurate, trusted – SUBSCRIBE. The post United Way seeks state support to expand distribution facility appeared first on Salem Reporter. ...read more read less