The Georgia Mountain Food Bank celebrated the opening of its new 20,000-square-foot facility in Gainesville Friday with an open house.

The Boomershine Family Logistics Center was built with the support of numerous donors including the building’s namesake, the Boomershine family, and the Medical Center Foundation.

A crowd of about 300 people attended the event, including Gov. Nathan Deal and first lady Sandra Deal.

Deal thanked the many supporters for helping the food bank get to this point and for continuing to sustain it as it grows.

He said the food bank is a prime example of what can be accomplished with a public and private partnership.

“The cooperation that has been put in place to make this possible and build this facility is of course very significant,” Deal said.

He said it can sometimes be hard for people who have never been hungry to understand that there are hungry people in the community and many of those are children.

Many of the food bank’s supporters shared his concern for the hungry children in the community.

“I truly don’t want to see anyone go hungry, certainly not children,” said Walter Boomershine, Georgia Mountain Food Bank board member.

For the last 3« years, the food bank has operated out of donated space at Hollis Transport Agency in Flowery Branch.

Executive Director of the Georgia Mountain Food Bank Kay Blackstock thanked Brian Hollis, owner of Hollis Transport Agency, for his support.

The food bank is an affiliate of the Atlanta Community Food Bank. Rather than provide food directly to families, the food bank distributes food to 44 partner agencies in Hall, Dawson, Forsyth, Lumpkin and Union counties.

“Food bank is a total misnomer. We don’t store food. We want to get it in and get it out,” Boomershine said.

The food bank has recently received a donated truck from PFG Milton that will help transport food to other agencies.

Blackstock said that with the new truck and the increased storage space, the food bank will be able to help more people while simultaneously increasing the capacity of its partner agencies.

Supporters of the food bank said they were excited about the new opportunity the facility will bring.

“I think it’s great. The building is terrific,” Jim Mathis, Georgia Mountain Food Bank treasurer, said. “It’s wonderful to start out in a new building that is designed specifically for food bank activities.”

Over the next five years, the food bank plans to expand its capacity and the capacity of its partner agencies.

Blackstock said the organization plans to accept 6 million pounds of food in the next five years.

The now mostly bare shelves of the food bank will soon be stocked with hundreds of pallets of donated food. The 3,500-square-foot cooler and freezer space will store more food items that once might have been turned down for lack of cool storage.

“The challenge is going to be to fill the warehouse, and a lot of people have pitched in to do that,” Mathis said. “The freezer cooler is awesome. It’s designed to hold over 160 pallets. It’ll be full of a lot of protein and chicken real soon.”

In addition to ample storage, the building has a special room for volunteers called the Volunteer Action Center. Volunteers will be able to more easily and comfortably sort through donated food items and prepare boxes of food for deliveries.

“Very much the community built this building so we wanted the community to feel comfortable and have a place to come and work and take pride and ownership in it,” Blackstock said.