VOA Meals On Wheels
Saunders Construction
By Sean O’Keefe
Construction Award Writer
A Higher Calling
Volunteers of America Colorado (VOAC) is dedicated to helping those in need transform their lives through more than 50 distinct human services programs. Among the many, Meal on Wheels delivers healthy, hot meals to people 60+ across eight metro-Denver counties. In the summer of 2023, VOAC completed a major program milestone in relocating the Denver Meals on Wheels hub from RiNo to Commerce City through partnerships with Edens Realty, Shopworks Architecture, and Saunders Construction.
Celebrating 50 years of excellence in Colorado in 2023, Saunder’s leveraged our nimble, resourceful Express Services Group to find the right building, economically convert it to program needs, and shepherd the transition from existing to new with limited disruption to food prep and delivery services. Along the way, we applied the invaluable lessons learned from lives in construction to the task of community building that has been at the heart of our mission for half a century.
Need
Ignited by Eden Realty’s desire to subsume VOAC’s Meals on Wheels hub in RiNo into a larger land redevelopment program, the finished facility not only doubles operational space but significantly improves the ease of loading and circulation through the hub for volunteer drivers.
Feasibility:
The first task was identifying a building resource that married VOAC’s many acute programmatic needs within a site location, building form/existing condition, and pro-forma that made sense. Saunders assembled a team that included electrical and mechanical subcontractors to assess various building options for the feasibility of being converted to meet VOAC’s needs. Having an in-depth understanding of what’s what when attempting adaptive reuse is imperative to aligning owner and user expectations for the building’s performance to the realistic potential for difficult construction conditions each property presents.
“Saunders played a crucial role in preconstruction in identifying the right building in Commerce City, assessing its adaptability to our needs, and tenaciously driving the transformation through an incredibly difficult construction market. We have partnered with Saunders many times and will again. They always go above and beyond.”
David Schunk, President and CEO
Volunteers of America Colorado
Scope:
Once identified, the program for the new Commerce City hub required an unusual configuration of space in primarily being an industrial kitchen facility whose patrons are trucks and delivery vans. Spatial perimeters include 6,046 SF of kitchen, 3,740 SF of freezers, 10,828 SF of delivery dock, 14,036 SF of office, and 18,540 SF of warehouse for a total of 53,790 SF.
To activate the space, VOAC used a combination of new and existing equipment in retrofitting the new building’s kitchen and warehouse components. Though the Meals on Wheels program is staffed by both professional culinary managers and skilled workers, the building’s primary mission is to accommodate a daily parade of trucks and vans loaded with meals bound for distribution points. VOAC estimates that the average volunteer drives approximately 40,000 miles a year delivering approximately 5,000 meals. The biggest functional challenge at the old hub was the awkward process of getting trucks and vans into position for loading. The new hub is designed for vehicles to drive directly into the building, entering, and exiting via independent ramps in a pull-through process.
Mechanically, the space is primarily a kitchen, which meant cutting new utility trenches into the floor for plumbing and drainage, installing exhaust hoods, and accounting for an industrial-grade dishwasher. Pretty much everything required some sort of power, water, or waste removal. Complicating matters, as an invested owner’s rep., Eden’s Realty decided to procure the new kitchen equipment themselves to economize the project. Inherently this resulted in a lack of coordination between the purchased equipment, the reused equipment, and the construction documents. Consequently, virtually every utility connection on every item had to be painstakingly field-fit and tested. Being a commercial kitchen, all of it had to meet the stringent requirements of the Department of Public Health & Environment overseeing all food service facilities.
Partial Start:
Accommodating VOAC’s desire to limit program disruption to as little as possible during the transition from RiNo to Commerce City, Saunders pulled double duty to facilitate a partial start period in the new hub. Leveraging General Manager, Dale Schneider’s relationships at VOA and firm responsibilities, Saunders was able to identify equipment that was intended to be reused and assemble a package of pieces that could facilitate a partial start in the new space without jeopardizing the old hub’s ability to remain operational. This minimized program downtime, while Saunders built out the new hub, and the old one was decommissioned.
Participation
Saunder’s involvement with VOAC goes back many years as Volunteers of America was near and dear to firm founder Dick Saunders who was heavily involved, as is our current President, Justin Cooper. Saunders GM, Dale Schneider, who played a hands-on role in this project, supports VOAC’s Children’s Services Committee in his free time.
For the new Meals on Wheels hub, Saunders provided time and resources to the site selection effort and committed 1.5 percent of our fee as a donation to the $4.7m project. Further, as we advance into the renovation of VOAC’s operational headquarters, Saunders is organizing a day of giving trade fair, where project participants of every ilk can celebrate our shared labor of love – building for others.
Impact
Meals on Wheels originated in the United Kingdom during World War II when many citizens had been bombed out of their homes and were therefore unable to cook for themselves. Wheeled carts, cars, and basketed bicycles were used to deliver meals in the early hours of what has since become a worldwide effort to feed the housebound elderly.
VOAC’s region of service includes eight metro-Denver counties with a combined population of 3.2 million people. The Commerce City hub substantially increases the program’s ability to serve those in need of this huge service area. While the RiNo hub served some 600,000 meals each year, Commerce City is equipped to double program capacity to 1.2 million meals annually. Each meal consists of an entrée and sides like vegetables, fruits, bread, and milk to account for at least one-third of the recommended daily nutrients for older adults. Seniors pay whatever they can afford; some nothing at all, others more than necessary.
Just as importantly, the program fosters interpersonal connections between drivers and the housebound people they support. In seeing one another several times a week, drivers often get to know their seniors through chats about the weather, family, or what’s going on in the world. Small connections made repeatedly become relationships, and then friendships, which is good for the soul.
Value
The first home deliveries of Meal on Wheels following WWII were made by the Royal Voluntary Service in 1943. By 1954, the first American home-delivered meal program started in Philadelphia and subsequently spread throughout the country. Though Meals on Wheels is independently funded and administered by charitable organizations around the world, fundamentally the collective experience represents a continuous thread of humanity. In providing homebound seniors with a nutritious meal and a few cherished moments of personal contact, countless lives around the world are made better and brighter every day.
In doubling the production capacity of the facility, VOAC accounts for the program’s long-term growth for many years to come. In developing the new hub as a pull-through facility, VOAC significantly reduces the time, effort, and wear and tear on the program’s key cog – delivery drivers. In creating new jobs and teaching culinary operations this project strengthens people’s lives. Near-term, this building is equipped to serve 1.2 million meals a year. Long-term, people caring about one another is good for everyone.
“Saunders helped us create a state-of-the-art kitchen and food bank that provides meals to the elderly and creates good community jobs. The new facility offers on-the-job training for people to learn culinary skills, entrepreneurism, and how to be effective food operators. Saunders knew our mission and vision and maintained a schedule, responsiveness, and quality of service that supported our success.”
- David Schunk, President and CEO
Volunteers of America Colorado
Safety
In any building renovation project, supreme diligence during construction is a must. The adaptive reuse of the existing building necessitated structural stabilization, heavy saw cuts in floors to trench for plumbing, and safeing-off existing systems so new equipment could be installed. No injuries were recorded on this project. Total Hours Worked: 54,780 / Lost Time hours: 0:00
The new hub’s kitchen and loading processes account for ergonomic balance and leverage the same spatial planning strategies used to optimize institutional kitchens in schools and universities. Both volunteers and program employees will enjoy a smarter, safer facility.
Environmentally, the wins start with the reuse of an existing building. Upcycling a building of this nature reduces waste and breathes new life, purpose, and activity into the surrounding context. In streamlining the loading process, the vehicles are in and out faster, wasting less time and gas idling. Likewise, the substantial increase in cold storage contributes to reductions in food waste.
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