Construction workers building QTS’s seven-building data center campus assembled 30,000 meals Wednesday, Jan. 28, for Iowa families facing food insecurity, partnering with two regional nonprofits to address hunger during National Poverty in America Awareness Month.
Layton Construction and Weitz Company mobilized 130 workers and staff at their Cedar Rapids jobsite to package meals with Meals from the Heartland, which brought ingredients and equipment directly to the construction site. The Hawkeye Area Community Action Program will deliver the packaged meals to local food banks.
The meal-packaging effort comes as one in six Iowa children battle hunger, according to the construction teams.
“Ensuring thousands of meals are available to local families is exactly the kind of impact we want to have,” said Blake Westbroek, vice president of operations at Layton Construction.
The Layton-Weitz partnership is constructing QTS’s multiphase data center campus, a project expected to generate over 4,500 high-quality construction and permanent jobs as part of Cedar Rapids’ expanding technology infrastructure.
Andy Bates, director of operations at Weitz, said the companies view community engagement as extending beyond project delivery. “Fighting hunger is a mission-critical priority for us this month, and we want our impact to be felt long after the workday ends,” he said.
The data center development represents a significant investment in Iowa’s technology economy, with construction currently underway on the campus that will expand the region’s digital infrastructure capacity.
Meals from the Heartland is a nonprofit that mobilizes communities to package and deliver meals to combat hunger. HACAP serves nine Eastern Iowa counties with poverty-relief programs.
Layton Construction, headquartered in Salt Lake City, operates 16 offices nationally and employs more than 1,700 construction professionals across multiple commercial markets.
