Soup kitchen buys San Jose property to meet rising demand

SAN JOSE Martha s Kitchen whose food programs provide meals a month purchased a San Jose property in a deal that will enable it to meet rising demand and potentially buoy other nonprofits An affiliate of the soup kitchen paid about million for a retail and industrial building at Story Rd across the street from Happy Hollow Zoo documents filed on July with the Santa Clara County Recorder s Office show It will serve as the new Martha s Kitchen site Martha's Kitchen workers are seen inside the soup kitchen's current operations at Willow Street in San Jose Martha's Kitchen Center for Training and Careers which does business as ConXion sold the Story Road property to the Martha s Kitchen affiliate county documents show ConXion also signed a lease with its new landlord leasing roughly square feet from Martha s Kitchen Related Articles South Bay apartment hub bought in deal that tops million San Jose property leased to IHOP restaurant lands local buyer Oakland apartment complexes flop into default in ailing industry Tech company headquarters in San Jose bought at a discount Fremont goes all in on AI boom with new tech campus The soup kitchen currently operates in the hall of the Sacred Heart Church site at Willow St in San Jose south of the city s downtown district The new location is about miles from the current site We have grown so much We are in pretty tight spaces where we are now explained Bill Lee CEO of Martha s Kitchen We now serve five to six times the number of meals that we were serving during COVID We are seeing a big increase in demand Martha s Kitchen scouted for a new location for about two years before it settled on the site that it exposed on Story Road We will move all supporters storage meal serving and parking to the new Story Road location Lee commented The first stage of the move should occur by late August or early September he estimated Commercial real estate brokers Steve Zamudio of Colliers and James Viso and Derik Benson of Kidder Mathews helped to arrange the property purchase It s an outreach area for the society Zamudio declared This location works really well for a nonprofit organization Martha s Kitchen can feed homeless persons out of that location The soup kitchen believes the new Story Road location will benefit both the public and the nonprofit For the future of Martha s Kitchen this is going to be great Lee mentioned We can expand in the building and we can grow as an organization Other nonprofits will also be occupying part of the ConXion space leaving somewhat more than square feet available for the soup kitchen This move allows us to stay in central San Jose Lee declared A lot of our clients are near our new location and we will still be able to serve everyone we are helping now Buying a long-term site will also produce challenges for Martha s Kitchen Now we have to fundraise for the building we bought Lee commented At least one other food-oriented Bay Area nonprofit has paved the way to future improvement through real estate deals In Second Harvest of Silicon Valley a high-profile food bank paid million for a site at North First St in north San Jose s Alviso district that will serve as its future headquarters and food-handling center In June Second Harvest paid million for empty land next to the North First site to bolster future food-handling efforts