Bridgeport Food Bank closes doors

BRIDGEPORT – In a surprise announcement last week the co-founders of the current Bridgeport Food Bank headquartered at the Wellspring of Life Church at 1300 Foster Avenue said the food distribution service will cease operations immediately.

Church co-pastors Carlos and Zuni Henriquez, who re-started the food bank that had served the community for a quarter century before their arrival, have operated the current food bank since April 2020.

The previous food bank that operated under the Bridgeport Community Church at the same location was forced to close its doors in October 2017 when the church lost its pastor and the food bank lost the necessary insurance, utilities, and other financial support it could not afford as a nonprofit.

Mayor Janet Conklin exhausted all options to find another location to house and support the service that served up to 200 families, but none materialized until the new pastors arrived from Moses Lake. On the first day of operations three years, more than 100 cars queued up for boxes of food delivered to each vehicle by volunteers.

“I’d love to keep it here, but we just don’t have a building we can put it in,” said Conklin last Friday, March 3. “It has to be up to code with running water and nothing like that is available.”

An earlier suggestion to bring in a doublewide mobile home and set on church property to provide an extra building did not happen. Conklin has inquired about a mobile food truck out of Wenatchee that could park in the city and distribute from there but so far that has not materialized. 

Coming on the heels of the suspension of monthly food deliveries from Second Harvest in Spokane compounded by the end of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) pandemic-related emergency allotments last month, the food bank closure puts an extra burden on existing services.