Six years ago, we signed up to lead a project that will transform
a vacant lot near public housing and one of the elementary
schools we serve. The vision: improve the health of children by
transforming the school district to prioritize food literacy
education in our children’s school day alongside math and
reading. Years of collaboration between Food Literacy Center,
SCUSD, and the City of Sacramento has resulted in construction of a 4,500 sq ft cooking school
and student gardens that bring this vision to
life!
Watch our founder, and the visionary behind this concept, Amber
Stott, as she shares a
quick update on the construction progress at Leataata Floyd
Elementary School. Our cooking classroom will host 30-40 students
for hands-on cooking classes. The commercial kitchen will support
prep for afterschool programs at other Title 1 schools. Our team
offices, also on site, will provide training space and a recipe
test kitchen. In addition, we’ll have a 1-acre healing garden and
student farm to provide a safe nature space for our students.
We broke ground on this one-of-a-kind project in September 2019.
Construction is moving fast on the building. Solar panels have
been installed and now we are entering Phase 2 of our
center! Phase 2 will be to raise $500K to complete
construction of the student farm and community
gardens.
Click on the photos below to see the
progress!
After the groundbreaking in September 2019, there were many
delays due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Preparation of the site
started again in May 2020. Deep stabilizing pylons were
placed in September and October which required a large piece of
equipment and lots of earth pounding. In November utilities
were laid. The outline of the cooking school could be seen where
they built concrete framing and installed beams.
In early December 2020, the concrete floors were poured and
it’s started looking like a real building. Walls went up in
the middle of December and by January 2021 you could see the
walls in front and the center support beam extending the
length of the building.
In late January 2021 the roof was added, there was framing inside
and you can see the full shape and size of the building and back
patio which will be an outdoor classroom area. Staff and board
members were able to tour the site. In March the siding,
windows and roof were being worked on.
In April more work was done on the exterior siding, roof and
interior. We’ve also secured a landscape architect to
bring our Urban Farm and
Garden to life! In addition, the Building Leadership Talent
class at SMUD chose phase 1 of the garden as their class project
and will be helping to build out the area in spring/summer 2021.
In June appliances were installed in our commercial kitchen and
kitchen classroom. Our commercial kitchen consists of
induction stovetops, walk-in refrigerator, and dry storage.
We are excited this space will allow us to serve more kids
and families.
On October 15 we moved into our brand new
facility, adjacent to Leataata Floyd Elementary. Our
cooking classroom will serve 30+ students, the commercial
kitchen will allow us to keep our produce fresh and provide us
with the storage we need to keep running our program. This new
space will serve as our offices where our staff will train
future instructors of our curriculum and manage day-to-day
operations.
November 3rd It’s official! After more than six years of
hard work Food Literacy Center finally has a home! We
formally received the keys to this 4,500 square foot facility at
a brief Key Ceremony held by the Sacramento City Unified School
District to commemorate the milestone.
Our cooking school operates near Leataata Floyd Elementary
School & Marina Vista public housing. The site is owned and built
by Sacramento City Unified School District. Our nonprofit has
moved on site to operate the facility and run programs. Our new
center is a 2.5-acre project which features a cooking
classroom, commercial kitchen, and student gardens.
This new cooking school will serve the 330 elementary school
students enrolled at Leataata Floyd Elementary, their families,
and students throughout the district, plus community members.
April 2022 We began phase 2 of our construction. Solar
panels were installed on the rooftop and in the parking
lot–enough to power all our ovens, fridges, and
computers. Construction is also occurring in our student and
community gardens.
May 2022 A walkway for our student garden was installed,
you begin to see our garden take shape. Now Food
Literacy Center has to raise $500K to complete construction of
the student farm.
May 2022 Construction is also underway on the front side of the
building for our community garden. This outdoor space will be
managed by City of Sacramento Parks & Recreation. This space will
allow us to provide garden education to our community members.
Help us expand programs for our kids in this new
space. Your support will help us build the next generation
of healthy kids!
