University of the Pacific buys Sacramento Food Bank properties for big expansion in Oak Park

The University of the Pacific has acquired the former headquarters of the Sacramento Food Bank and Family Services in Oak Park and the nonprofit’s nearby warehouses for $12.9 million as part of a strategic expansion of the college’s Sacramento campus.

UoP plans to establish an innovative medical clinic in one of the buildings that will bring its dentistry, pharmacy and health sciences students and world-class faculty together under one roof. Oftentimes, it is the dentist who alerts patients that they are showing signs of chronic diseases such as diabetes and high blood pressure, UoP officials have said, because patients see their dentist twice a year but may skip annual exams with their primary care doctors.

“When you go to one place, you can have a check up for your dental, a check up for your health to address diabetes or any other chronic disease in one place,” said Nicoleta Bagnariu, the founding dean of the School of Health Sciences. “We’re thinking about improved patient experience, improved outcomes, reduced cost of care and access because all of those (services are) being done under one roof. “

Bagnariu stressed that her school is partnering with Pacific’s Arthur A. Dugoni School of Dentistry to create an environment where health professionals from different disciplines understand the benefits of working in tandem, something that can only benefit patients..

UoP leaders said they decided to buy the food bank buildings because rather than building from the ground up “because the properties came on the market during our planning process.”

“They are the perfect size and location to serve our students and the community,” university officials said in a statement sent to The Bee. “It also is more sustainable for the environment to use existing buildings. In addition, our savings from buying property can go directly into funding these critically needed health care programs.”

Blake Young, the chief executive officer of the Sacramento Food Bank, said Wednesday that the funds from the sale will allow his organization to expand its new Bell Avenue headquarters, which it gained with the acquisition of Senior Gleaners in 2014.

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, demand for the food bank’s goods more doubled to 300,000 even as its large corps of senior volunteers dwindled because of stay-home orders. The cost of sorting, buying goods and supporting the work surged.

“Every single corner of our business has been affected whether it’s transactions on an accounting situation, whether it’s feeding individual people, whether it’s the amount of trucks that we need now, the amount of cold storage that we need to store,” Young said. “Forty percent of everything that we distribute is fresh fruits and vegetables. We need more cold storage. We need more racking. We need more warehouse space.”

Much of the work of distributing this food to those who need it falls to the food bank’s network of 130 charities: River City Food Bank, Shiloh Baptist Church, Romanian Apostolic Faith in Jesus, Youth Xplosion and dozens of others. These organization often need equipment for storage as well, Young said, and the food bank steps in because it wants to ensure community need is met. So, a chunk of the funds from the sale will go to outfitting agencies for the work.

Young said that Pacific was the first of a handful of organizations to express interest in its properties at 3300 Third Ave., 3308 Third Ave. and 3333 Third Ave. Altogether, there is 60,000 square feet of space in those buildings.

Pacific was a neighbor that Young knew. Their campus was just one block away from the food bank’s properties. The university’s interest never wavered. Young said, even as other potential suitors surfaced.

The food bank will actually be leasing the buildings back from UoP for several months, Young said, because they are building out space on Bell Avenue to accommodate staff still working out of the Third Avenue buildings. The sale is bittersweet, Young said, because the food bank launched in 1976 at Immaculate Conception Parish in Oak Park and has been a fixture on Third Avenue since 1990.

The university’s project, however, continues the food bank’s mission of enhancing the lives of people in Oak Park and regionally both as patients and as students, Bagnariu said. The health sciences school, which launched in 2020, intentionally recruits students from under-served communities with the hope of seeing them return to those communities to practice, she said.

“We’re ... focusing on increasing access to our health care professional programs for students that come from underrepresented minority groups,” she said. “That means that we are providing those students with a professional trajectory that truly changes their life because now they have access to this rewarding career and health profession. But we’re also establishing a healthcare workforce that represents the population that we are serving.”

The Pacific expansion comes as UC Davis also expands its nearby medical center campus, putting Oak Park and other nearby neighborhoods at ground zero for a boom in jobs.