After receiving the former Pioneer Bank building in Elmore as a gift, the Jesus Food organization has now decided to put the building up for sale.

For sale 7,000-square-foot building in downtown Elmore.

After receiving the former Pioneer Bank building in Elmore as a gift, the Jesus Food organization has now put the structure up for sale.

“We said all along that if we did not have enough (financial) support to own the building, we would have to sell it,” says Tim Stromer of Jesus Food. “And we are just not able to continue to own it.”

Pioneer Bank closed its Elmore branch in June of last year, and in July they announced they were donating it to the Jesus Food group.

“Our hope was to use it to store food, do pack events and have fun doing it,” Stromer says. “We hoped our ownership of it would be a blessing to the Blue Earth and Elmore communities. Because as the Bible says, it is more blessed to give than it is to receive.”

The goal was to try and have a food pack at the bank building once a week. But Stromer says they have tried to have four or five pack events there, including during Elmore’s summer celebration, and not many people showed up.

Although he now has the former bank building up for sale, Stromer has not given up hope that he might still be able to use it.

“If we somehow get donations to continue to operate we could keep it,” he says. “And also, if whoever buys the building does not need all the space, perhaps we can still arrange to have some pack events there.”

Stromer says the building was put on the market a little over a month ago. They are looking for bids on it, with the minimum amount set at $25,000. If they do not get an offer of that amount in the next month or so, then the plan is to list it with a realtor.

“All of the proceeds from the sale of the building are going to go right into our operations of packing food for Jesus Food,” Stromer says. “So one way or another the building is still a blessing to our goals.”

Jesus Food operates a pack event each week out of the mall in the city of Faribault, and also does them on a loose schedule in Good Thunder and Mankato.

Each meal costs about 23 cents in material, Stromer explains. And each package contains food for six meals, at a cost of $1.38 per bag.

“If we have at least 10 volunteers who come to one of our sites we can then hold a pack,” he says. “But, we also have the ability to do a mobile pack.”

The group has a semi-truck to bring all the food, bags, bag sealers, scales and other items to virtually anywhere for a packing event.

“But we want to have at least 100 volunteers lined up for a mobile pack,” he says. “And each volunteer needs to raise $60 to cover the cost of the trip and the food and materials.”

Stromer says the packing at the site at the city of Faribault is going well, and has increased every year. So is a site in California that was started by a friend of Stromers who lives part of the time in Minnesota, part in California.

“We wanted to use the Elmore building to help area folks do something about starving kids around the world,” he says. “There is just something wonderful about helping others, maybe saving lives of people you have never met. But, it has not worked out and like any business, we had to make a decision and that was to sell the building.”

Anyone interested in Jesus Food and how to help, or want information on the building for sale in Elmore, can call Stromer at (507) 469-4357 or email him at info@JesusFood.org.