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ACCESS kitchen almost cooking Photo by Jim Craven ACCESS Inc.'s new community kitchen is under construction at the agency's offices behind Price Costco in Medford. Large vent hoods, center, will have stoves beneath them. ACCESS programs include the senior Loaves and Fishes lunch program and the countywide food pantry. Top-of-line facility cost $1.98 million By SUSAN JAY The walls are up and the floors almost down for the first community kitchen in Jackson County. After more than two years of planning and fund raising, the staff at ACCESS Inc. hopes to be cooking lunches by July 1 for seniors and kids in the new 5,600-square-foot kitchen in north Medford. The state-of-the-art cooking facility should be completed and open by then, but the fund raising for the $1.98 million project will continue through September. ACCESS has to be out of its Grants Pass kitchen by July 1, and the contractor, S&B James Construction, has agreed to wait for payment until ACCESS has raised the money. For two years, the agency has cooked its senior Loaves and Fishes lunches -- some 140,329 meals annually -- in Grants Pass and delivering them by van to 10 meal sites in Jackson County. Foundations and some individuals have already contributed $1.3 million. ACCESS is now going to the public for the last $600,000. "We still have some grant applications out and we have individuals and corporations who we are talking to," said Patty Claeys, ACCESS executive director. Bill Thorndike, a member of the ACCESS steering committee for the kitchen project, said the Oregon Community Foundation awarded ACCESS $25,000 Wednesday, the largest amount given in this grant cycle. Thorndike said he became involved with the kitchen project because "it truly represents a collaboration, bringing together resources to more effectively and efficiently serve those in need of food in Jackson County." He also said he supports the idea of the kitchen acting as a laboratory where college students and residents of the Veterans Affairs Domiciliary can learn food preparation. Other key contributors so far include Wanda and Sherm Olsrud, owners of Sherm's Thunderbird, who made a personal gift of $100,000. The Meyer Memorial Trust contributed $250,000, the Ford Family Foundation and Collins Foundation each donated $150,000 and the Carpenter Foundation gave $80,000. ACCESS staff and board members pledged $41,000 in payroll deductions and individual contributions. As a way to recognize individual contributors, Claeys said ACCESS will lay a brick in the kitchen's walkway engraved with the donor's name, for those who donate $150 or more. Others who wish to contribute can do so by writing a check to ACCESS Inc. and mailing it to P.O. Box 4666, Medford, OR 97501. For more information on the kitchen, call ACCESS at 779-6691. ACCESS is a community action agency created by the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 to help eliminate the causes of poverty at the local level. ACCESS programs include the senior Loaves and Fishes lunch program, the countywide food pantry and Barnett Town Homes. "The kitchen is sort of another arm to the food delivery service, and will increase our ability to use food efficiently," Claeys said. Eventually, "we would be providing food to any food organization that becomes part of the whole food distribution service." ACCESS's plans for the kitchen include preparing some 240 meals a day for White City elementary school students in the summer lunch program, funded by the U.S. Department of Education for low-income families. The kitchen will also supply summer lunches to the two new Boys and Girls Club sites in White City, and to the summer day camp at the Barnett Town Homes, a housing project for low-income families owned and managed by ACCESS. The kitchen will also serve as a classroom for chef and hotel and restaurant management students at Rogue Community College and Southern Oregon University. Next year, Claeys said, ACCESS wants to develop a food recovery program similar to one in Eugene. ACCESS, in cooperation with area restaurants, would repackage unserved restaurant food, flash freeze it and deliver it to the food pantries. Such meals would be ideal for programs such as the Salvation Army, Dunn House or OnTrack's residential treatment programs. Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA