NW Community Food, a food pantry for neighbors in need, is moving to a new UDC-donated space

The NW Community Food will be staying in Van Ness.

Every Sunday for the past four years, the volunteer-run pantry has distributed free food and cleaning supplies from the former Walgreens (4225 Connecticut Avenue) in partnership with UDC, which holds the master lease on the property. At the March ANC 3F meeting, NW Community Food’s executive director, Judith Ingram, said UDC was pursuing development plans for the site, and that the pantry needed to move out by the end of May.

She was also told, however, that the UDC Real Estate and Facilities Management office was “aggressively” searching for another space the pantry could use.

It found one.

Ingram revealed at the April 22nd ANC 3F meeting that UDC is donating “a really good space” in the back of the David A. Clarke Law School. The location is across the alley from the UDC tennis courts.

NW Community Food will distribute supplies from behind the UDC law school at 4340 Connecticut Avenue.

Renovations, Ingram said, were under way.

“We will have our last distribution at our current site Memorial Day weekend,” Ingram said, “and hope desperately to be able to open the very next weekend – June 1st – in the new space.”

Ingram expressed gratitude to UDC, to the ANC (which passed a resolution in support of NW Community Food’s efforts) to Council member Matt Frumin, and to “our neighbors.”

“Every week we have a parade of people bringing us things to hand on to our neighbors,” Ingram said, “and I think it’s just become a great community effort.”

NW Community Food accepts donated items every Saturday and Sunday between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. The supplies are handed out between 1 and 3 p.m. on Sundays, in the alley behind 4225 Connecticut and across from Giant Food.

The Sunday just prior to the April ANC meeting was also Easter. Ingram said attendance was among the highest yet, with nearly 350 households served.