The building would consolidate the IFC’s food pantry and community kitchen along with the offices at their Carrboro headquarters on 110 W. Main St. to more effectively feed a hungry community.
The IFC presented the design concept for the proposed building at a meeting Thursday night.
The review took place at McDougle Middle and Elementary Schools, with a joint advisory board for the town of Carrboro listening to the project’s early blueprint.
Jim Spencer, the architect for the building, helped present the design scheme, which includes space for potted plants, rear ground level access for food deliveries and a covered interior courtyard.
“There was a desire amongst some of the business owners and some of the town staff and amongst IFC to have a place where their clients could come and wait before and after meals that was out of the weather but was off the public right-of-way,” he said.
The building was designed to maximize efficiency with a commercial kitchen, a pantry and lots of room for food storage, but also to present a civic front and to showcase the scope of the IFC’s work.
“It has a gathering space, it has a kind of a vertical circulation tower, so you can see the people moving about because it’s an amazing number of people that come and go from that building,” Spencer said. “I’m not sure everyone in town realizes the number of people that IFC feeds on a daily basis.”
Spencer says the current community kitchen, which feeds 75 to 125 people per meal, has a waiting room, but one that’s possibly too small to meet current demands .
