About Us

What is I-70 Street Reach 

I-70 Street Reach was originated as Grant Avenue Street Reach in 1993. The service project was to provide a complete meal once per week for homeless and marginalized people living in the downtown Denver area. 

The first site was a Methodist church located at 216 S. Grant, hence the name Grant Avenue Street Reach. The program quickly outgrew the facility and moved to a Babtist church at 1400 Grant Avenue, where the program matured and thrived for many years.  As many as 700 individuals were receiving a complete meal once per week which included salads, spaghetti with meat sauce, vegetables, bread and desserts as well as coffee and drinks.  About this time a clothing bank was also started to provide basic necessities to the clients. 

Then one winter, power was lost in the church and the steam pipes used for heat froze and burst.  The church was required to shutdown for an extended time to remodel and bring the building up to code.  Grant Avenue Street Reach then moved to a church at 1600 Grant Avenue and continued with the mission, providing meals, clothing, blankets, sleeping bags, backpacks, etc. Again the program outgrew the facility, as numbers being served each week were sometimes over 1,000 individuals were allowed to come thru the line as often as they wanted and “to-go” meals were provided as well.  The program was then moved to a church at 1580 Gaylord further East but still in Denver. Then Covid hit and the program was required to shut down as in person serving of food was stopped. 

Following the lifting of Covid restrictions, it became apparent to Street Reach personnel, that  providing a single meal was not providing the basic needs of most of the clients.  They needed help throughout the week, not just a meal and a “to-go”.  It was then that the decision was made to re-invent the program as a food bank, in which clients could be provided with one or more boxes of food including staples, vegetables, meat and dairy that could provide multiple meals to an individual or a family for as much as a week. 

I-70 Street Reach was then initiated in the town of Bennett to provide food to clients along the I-70 East corridor, including the towns of Watkins, Bennett, Strasburg, Byers, Deer Trail and their surrounding areas. This is the current mission of I-70 Street Reach Food Bank and the project has been successful as the number of clients continue to grow and the ability of the personnel to obtain and distribute food has continued to increase as well. 

In addition, Grant Avenue Street Reach is now working on salvaging bicycles to be provided to men in need of transportation but may not have access to motor vehicles.  Donated bicycles for adults that can be rebuilt are being fixed up, tuned and provided to a number of groups that can get the bicycles to clients that truly need them for work.