Six months after announcing that it had found a new home, the Ballard Food Bank revealed the address – 5130 Leary Ave. N.W. – of the new location it will be moving into this summer.

Nancy McKinney, executive director of the food bank, made the announcement about the move at the Dec. 9 Ballard District Council meeting but did not give the exact address of the new location because the lease had not been signed.

At the meeting, McKinney said the Ballard Food Bank's current building at 7001 24th Ave. N.W. was too small, limiting food storage space and forcing patrons to line up outside the building in the rain and cold while waiting to be served.

She said a residential location for the food bank was not ideal anyway.

"We want to get out of the residential area," she said at the meeting. "It's a bad place for us to be. It really does make my hair gray."

In an announcement about the move sent May 18, McKinney identified the following ways the new location will help the Ballard Food Bank continue its mission:

• Significantly increase capacity to help individuals and families to meet their basic needs.
• Expand facility and storage space, increasing square footage by 75 percent.
• Be designed specifically for our operations, improving use of space and flow.
• Provide up to 25 spaces of onsite parking for clients, staff and volunteers.
• Feature a demonstration garden of approximately 300 square feet.
• Offer a large indoor waiting area, eliminating the need for clients to stand outside on the street.
• Provide walking access to several major bus lines.
• Expand administrative and multi-use space, opening new opportunities for collaboration with other service providers.
• Offer improved flat loading and unloading capacity to maintain collection of surplus groceries from 16 local businesses and more easily accept donations from the community.
• Extend our hours of operation during the daytime and be open during the evening once a week.

In addition, the Ballard Food Bank plans to build a small grocery store in its new building to allow customers to peruse aisles and pick out what they like, said Moment Architecture's Emily Hennigs, who is the architect behind the new location.

"It used to be food banks preselected your groceries, placed them on the counter in front of you and said, 'Here are your groceries,'", Hennigs said. "Today, food banks have found ways to treat the customer with more respect, to give the customer the freedom to make their own choices."

At the December meeting, McKinney said the rent on the new building is about twice what the food bank was currently paying, but the added space and potential of the new building balance that out.

For almost 40 years, the Ballard Food Bank has been serving restricted income seniors, low-income and homeless families, homeless adults and people facing temporary hardship due to job loss, illness or other difficult life circumstances, McKinney said in the May announcement.

During the last several years, demand for the food bank's services has grown. In 2009, the food bank served nearly 4,000 people from Ballard, Magnolia and north Queen Anne and distributed 1.9 million pounds of food.

To volunteer with the Ballard Food Bank, contact Nancy McKinney at 206.789.7800 or ed@ballardfoodbank.com.