You’ve probably heard of the Reeb Avenue Center, a south side community building and nonprofit collaboration that opened in a buzz last September. Just shy of its first anniversary, the center’s leadership has turned its focus to celebrating success stories, growing community buy-in and creating sustainability.
Board Secretary Jane Grote Abell says she and Board President Tanny Crane were giving a tour recently, when a young woman walked in with her 4-year-old daughter for a parenting class.
Property Manager Ally Smith had lunch with her and found out the woman was living in a homeless shelter. She had a job and was looking to better herself, so Smith took the time to determine how the center could wrap all of its services around her.
“That’s just one of the examples that happen every day, and I think it adds to the excitement of what we’re doing,” Abell says.
Abell, Crane and Smith want to ensure the Reeb Avenue Center is truly a community building.
“We were hopeful after our grand opening that all of the neighborhood would just come in the doors,” Crane says. “And so while we’re having increased traffic every day, very excited to see classes and graduations — our focus now is really on helping the community, our community, understand exactly what the services are in here, and ensure that they feel like this is their center.”
‘We couldn’t be all things to all people’
Several years ago, former Mayor Michael Coleman called for something different in the south side with the Southern Gateway Initiative.
The south side faces a crime rate twice the average of Columbus, one of the highest infant mortality rates in the U.S. and 72 percent of residents are classified as having very low incomes, among other issues.
“While we have a holistic approach, we recognized we couldn’t be all things to all people,” Crane says.
The Reeb Avenue Center focuses on education, workforce development and job training.
“We could have gotten lost if we didn’t have strategy around what was really needed in this building,” Crane says.
At first she says they worried about how to fill the building. But then they moved on to selectively thinking about what types of nonprofits would fit the needs of the community.
Some components critical to success were accessing the community’s needs by surveying 2,700 homes, as well as finding committed champions and a community asset that people believed in. Abell says the Reeb Avenue Elementary School had sat vacant for five years, but it had no vandalism, graffiti or broken windows.
Raising $12.5 million for construction and renovation for the 66,000-square-foot building was no easy task, and the south side initially was skeptical.
