Feeding Tampa Bay, a nonprofit organization that provides food assistance in 10 counties across West Central Florida, said its new purpose-built headquarters and distribution facility will enable it to provide food to more people in need in Central Florida.
The approximately 215,000-square-foot facility opened in 2024. Known as the Feeding Tampa Bay Causeway Center, the group said the new facility, built by Ryan Cos., provides the capacity to recover an additional 75 million meals and deliver twice as much fresh produce and perishable goods as its former location.
The new facility also improves efficiency, helping Feeding Tampa Bay reduce the cost per meal by 20% to 25%.
Ryan Cos. of Minneapolis completed the building in spring 2024. The company led the project as the design-build firm, and BDG Architects served as the architect of record.
The $60 million center “will change the lives of countless neighbors in the communities we call home,” Feeding Tampa Bay President and CEO Thomas Mantz said in a statement.
For its tremendous impact on the community, Feeding Tampa Bay's Causeway Center was selected as the winner of the CoStar 2025 Impact Award for commercial development of the year for Tampa/St. Petersburg, as judged by real estate professionals familiar with the market.
About the project: The new headquarters, which serves as Feeding Tampa Bay's primary distribution facility, contains 31,000 square feet of cold storage space and an 11,000-square-foot kitchen that serves daily meals.
What the judges said: "The sheer size of the building is very impressive, and having it in such a strategic and central location is phenomenal," said Lauren Coup, senior director of leasing at Highwoods Properties. "The (performance) stats this building provides compared to the old location are remarkable."
Cushman & Wakefield managing director Lisa Ross said, "There is no single development more impactful to our region than Feeding Tampa Bay’s Causeway Center. It’s a community portal to nutrition, job training, healthcare and a host of other social services, allowing our neighbors to find stability when they need it most."
Julia Silva, the president of Lee & Associates | Tampa Bay, said, "Having brokered the purchase of Feeding Tampa Bay’s new site and being familiar with their previous facility, I knew this location was ideal for enhancing the group's regional operations, improving efficiency, and better serving their countless volunteers and partners."
Caleb Lewis, an executive managing director at JLL, said the development deserved to win the award because "the impact on the community will be felt for years to come. I represented Feeding Tampa Bay on the acquisition of the land for this project, so this is especially meaningful to me."
They made it happen: Thomas Mantz, CEO of Feeding Tampa Bay; Executive Managing Director Caleb Lewis of JLL, who represented Feeding Tampa Bay on the project beginning with the initial land purchase. Doug Dieck, who recently retired as president of the Southeast Region for Ryan Cos.; Rayane Plyler, managing director of Stream Realty Partners; and Chris Kirschner, president of BDG Architects and Lisa Ross, managing director of Cushman & Wakefield, a member of Feeding Tampa Bay's board of directors.