Open Hand Reaches Capital Campaign Goal to Expand Facility

Atlanta nonprofit Open Hand, the nation’s largest community-based provider of home-delivered meals, will dig into a 17,000-square-foot facility expansion with a celebratory ceremony on Tuesday morning.

The expansion was essential and will nearly triple the size of Open Hand’s current facility; addressing the organization’s critical need for a larger, more efficient facility to increase meal production. Open Hand provides more than 5,000 meals and nutrition education to clients across Metro Atlanta every day and recently delivered its 20 millionth meal. 

The expansion, which comes on the heels of the nonprofit’s successful Capital Expansion Campaign that raised $4.2 million as a result of donations from philanthropic foundations, corporate partners and individual donors, will involve the merging of an adjacent facility at 181 Armour Drive with the current facility on Ottley Drive to create one unified and completely renovated campus.

“Over the past several years, Open Hand has experienced unprecedented growth and the expansion of our facility is a milestone in our ongoing effort to meet the growing needs of this community,” explained Stephen Woods, executive director of Open Hand in a statement. “We are proud to host this ceremony to honor the many partners and volunteers who got us here.”

New features of the facility will include a reconfigured kitchen, a new meal-packaging and distribution area, a volunteer engagement center, outdoor green space and multi-purpose areas providing new and larger space for education and training.

In addition to allowing Open Hand to serve more clients with medically appropriate meals, the facility will be instrumental in expanding Good Measure Meals™ – Open Hand’s social enterprise venture, which provides a combination of education, support and nutrition to promote healthier lifestyles for thousands of people in Metro Atlanta.

Construction on the new facility will be handled by GlenCastle Constructors, Inc., a consortium of builders that provides services for select nonprofits to help them realize significant savings. Atlanta-based TaC Studios is providing architectural design for the project. Southface Energy Institute Atlanta also provided guidance to ensure the expansion follows environmentally friendly practices.

For additional information on the new facility plans or to learn more about Open Hand, see here.