PRESTON — After nearly two years of struggles and work to rebuild the Preston Community Food Pantry, the finish line is close at hand.

George Young, president of the Preston Community Food Pantry, said the final piece of their efforts was put in motion during Monday night's Preston City Council meeting.

“As of May 1, we have a new lease, and we are breaking ground on a new 40-foot by 120-foot building,” he said.

The Preston Community Food Pantry's current incarnation traces back to 2009. It was a little more than two years ago, in March of 2024, when the person running the pantry fell ill. With no one to replace him, volunteers continued to do the work and receive donations, but the filing of paperwork with the state of Idaho, required for their operation, was lapsing.

“They were still trying to run it, but there was no one in an official capacity to do anything,” Young said. “Effectively, they were no longer an official entity.”

This was the condition Young found the pantry in when he first learned they had issues in August of 2024. Ironically, it was not the leadership problem that brought the pantry to his attention but an issue with the pantry's freezer.

Young was president of the Kiwanis Club of Preston at the time when pantry volunteers reached out to the club to see if anyone there could help with the pantry's freezer. They investigated and found the freezer was doing something called “heaving.” That means the foundation beneath the freezer wasn't put in correctly, and ice was building up under the concrete and pushing the freezer up into the ceiling.

“If it would have gone much longer, it would have pushed the roof off the building and broken the truss,” Young said.

That's when he learned just how much trouble the pantry was really in. Young and others in the community stepped in to fix a much-needed community resource.

“We got it going, a new board, getting the paperwork up to date with the government,” he said. “It was almost like starting it from scratch.”

As they worked to address the freezer issue, they realized it didn't have the proper foundation beneath it. Young said there is a special concrete and process used for laying a foundation that will accommodate a large walk-in type freezer. Part of that special process is in place to keep heaving from happening. What they sought was to add to the existing building, where a proper foundation and new freezer could be installed.

But they found it had a pretty high price tag.

“Our goal has been to raise money to build a new freezer,” Young said. “But to add on to the existing building to put in a new freezer was similar to the cost to just build a whole new building with a larger freezer.”

So the plan shifted, and the fundraising now had a goal of $300,000 to build a new facility for the Preston Community Food Pantry. They have a commitment from one donor to match up to $150,000 in donations, and they have raised $63,000 of that $150,000.

The plan is to lease ground from the city on a nearby spot on the same property where the current pantry sits and build their own building. To secure that lease, Preston resident Jim Read committed to providing a bond to the city for the full $300,000 cost of the building to guarantee it would be built.

“The new building is going to be 4,800 square feet, where the building we were in before was 1,600 square feet,” Young said. “We're going to have a brand new, larger freezer and a refrigerator with redundant systems, and everything will be updated to today's technology.”

But they do need additional donations to get this done, about $87,000 in additional donations. They have an account with Altabank, and Young said the easiest way to donate is to go into any Altabank and tell them you want to put money into the account for the Preston Community Food Pantry.

If you go to their Facebook page, you will also find a QR Code that will take you to a Venmo account you can send donations to. You can also just mail a check to the pantry at P.O. Box 109, Preston, Idaho, 83263.

Young said the pantry is a nonprofit organization, so anyone needing a donation receipt can just let them know. In addition to the physical pantry's presence, the new board and Young have been working to get their online presence updated.

“We have been repairing everything, getting it all up to date with correct phone numbers and addresses,” Young said.

The effort, he added, is important because the need for those coming to the Preston Community Food Bank is increasing every month.

“I am signing up one or two new families every week,” he said. “I signed up 10 new families (in April). I don't see the need going down anytime soon.”