The premier hunger prevention agency for Chicago’s West Side and near western suburbs cleared another hurdle in its bid to establish a new headquarters at a defunct grocery store site.
Oak Park-based Beyond Hunger, which provides hunger relief to people across 13 zip codes in Chicago, Oak Park, Forest Park and several other West Cook suburbs, has applied for special-use zoning permission from the village to take over the vacant building at 6209 W. North Ave. The charity is on its way to purchasing the blighted former home to several grocery store chains and a fitness center to turn it into its permanent headquarters, according to Beyond Hunger CEO Jennie Hull.
“We’ve needed a new home to bring all our programming under one roof,” Hull told Oak Park’s Zoning Board of Appeals at a hearing Feb. 11.
The zoning board approved the food pantry’s application unanimously. Beyond Hunger needed to go through Oak Park’s zoning approval process in order to operate a warehouse and distribution facility in Oak Park.
The planned facility will feature 6,000 square feet for warehousing space support, a large parking lot and much more, according to Hull’s application to the zoning board.
“This space will include a large amount of warehouse space, a client focused community market that will look and feel like a grocery store, a drive thru for our online market program, storage and staging for our home delivery program, and a cooking classroom/kitchen for food demos and cooking classes as well as social services space for our benefits access coordinator who helps the community sign up for benefits like food stamps and medical services,” Hull said.
Beyond Hunger has served people out of its location in the basement of First United Church at 848 Lake St. for nearly 50 years. Helping well over 70,000 clients over the last year, the charity has outgrown that space, Hull said.
Right now Beyond Hunger’s office and pantry hours are 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. Wednesdays and 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. Saturdays. It is open for donations from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays.
The charity is considering revisions to the schedule of some of its programming like its food box pick-up program and its market program so as not to increase traffic in the parking lot that might impact the surrounding area, Hull said.
Beyond Hunger’s application will go before Oak Park’s village board for final approval in the coming weeks.