After nearly two years of planning and fundraising, the Opportunity Center’s new Sharing Spaces Kitchen is a few months away from being open for business. Construction of the new 7,000 square foot shared-use kitchen incubator facility officially began this week. It will be located behind the Opportunity Center, next to Opportunities Blooming Greenhouse, in Prairie du Chien.
Support for the project has come from a variety of places including the USDA, Wisconsin Department of Commerce, Wisconsin Department of Ag, Trade, and Consumer Protection, Crawford County, and the City of Prairie du Chien. Also, this project would not be possible without help from Prairie du Chien City Planner Garth Frable.
Tom Steiner, the project’s architect, has worked with the Opportunity Center for the past year developing the design. Olympic Builders is the general contractor.
The project is expected to be completed by October 15th. Once open, the kitchen will house an artisan bakery named The Local Oven, provide small/medium-scale food processing and product development services for farmers and entrepreneurs, and offer educational opportunities through Southwest Technical College and other in-house food-related classes.
“Sharing Spaces Kitchen will have a tremendous impact on local food production and consumption in our area,” says Kitchen Director Dan Moris. He adds that the impact goes beyond local food. “This is true local economic development. This facility will help increase the capacity for local food products, enable more efficient local distribution, and promote local and regional consumption.”
The kitchen’s impact will be strengthened by an emerging network of local food processing and storage facilities in southern Wisconsin. The network, including facilities in Mineral Point, Viroqua, and Monroe, has attracted the attention of USDA – Rural Development Directors in Wisconsin, Iowa, and Illinois who recently met with the facilities to discuss future expansion of the concept. “These facilities are local food innovation centers that allow rural communities to sustain themselves from within doing something they are already good at – growing food,” says Moris, “there’s a lot of interest nationwide in what we are doing right here.”
An extension of the non-profit Opportunity Center, Sharing Spaces Kitchen’s primary goal is to provide employment opportunities for adults with disabilities. “We have very capable clients here that can do the job,” says Executive Director Pam Ritchie, “our mission is to provide the people we serve with an opportunity to gain valuable work and social experience so that they can develop their full potential.”
