Harry Chapin Food Bank is about to be much more than a food bank, getting ready to offer a place for people to shop for food and get advice on other community resources.

The expansion of Harry Chapin Food Bank – to include a huge new warehouse and distribution facility – is ahead of schedule, and that’s just in time, according to President and CEO Richard LeBer.

"We're seeing 25 to as much as 50% increase in the number of people who are coming to our food distributions and the food distributions of the other organizations we provide food to. And it's driven by a combination of things … most notably, just increasing costs across the board,: LeBer said.

There’s more to it than just food. LeBer said adding to the mix is rent and insurance and health care and child care and everything else that is causing working families in Southwest Florida to struggle to make ends meet. And, there’s more:

"On top of that, of course, a lot of those folks have been dependent on various forms of public benefits, and many of those programs have been cut pretty substantially as well.
So people are feeling the pinch, and they are finding it harder to get help than it used to be. But in our current facility, we don't have room to dedicate space to a proper facility to help them. And in the new building, we've blocked out some room where we can provide them with food, where we can talk to them about what's going on and see if we can connect them with other resources and other organizations that can help them with other things that are going on in their life."

The new Hunger Action Center is at the southwest corner of I-75 and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. in Fort Myers. Construction has reached the halfway point ahead of schedule. Officials expect to move into the facility in mid-October, rather than November as originally planned.