“There is no fate but what we make.” Spray-painted in fuzzy white letters in a corner on the back of the old East Lake Elementary School, these words read like a challenge to a community that’s seen better days. Built in the 1930s, the school has stood empty for several years. In some ways, its shattered windows, particle board barriers and dilapidated playground mirror the community around it. But the people who make up a nonprofit endeavor called OPEN in East Lake see potential for greatness not only in the building but also in the people who live nearby. With this in mind, the group hopes to buy the building from Hamilton County and turn it into “a neighborhood empowerment hub,” as board member Bob Sloan says below.
Read further to find out what he means and how OPEN in East Lake plans to accomplish its goals.
What does OPEN in East Lake want to do with the old elementary school?
We want to create a neighborhood empowerment HUD, not a community center or a recreation center. For example, there’s no public library in this area. During the summertime, there’s no connection to literature for the kids in his neighborhood. So we originally thought, “Why don’t we put a children’s library in there?” And then we saw that East Lake lacks other services. So we now have a nonprofit pediatrician who wants to move in, some legal aid people who want to move in, and East Lake Elementary teachers who want a daycare for their kids in the building.
We also want to offer something similar to the Incubator at the Business Development Center downtown. Let’s say you have skills that would allow you to offer a particular service, but you don’t know how to start a business. We want to create an opportunity for the people of East Lake to be mentored in how to run a business. Then they’ll be able to give back to the people in this community.
We don’t want to reinvent the wheel. We don’t want to create a food bank, for example.
We want to be an empowerment hub, a place where people in East Lake can develop and receive the services they desire. We’ll have the arts, pediatricians, legal aid, maybe a cafe, maybe a taco place, maybe a ribs place. It’ll be an interesting mix of nonprofit and profit.
So this effort will be made in East Lake, by the people of East Lake?
Right. We’re not the saviors of this community. We don’t want to say, “Here’s our building; come use it.” We want it to be their building. They’re going to have an investment in it, and they’re going to walk alongside us to create something incredible. Our intent is to empower the community of East Lake. There’s a lot of potential here.
Who owns this building?
Hamilton County. It’s 53,000 square feet on 2.3 acres. A builder from Knoxville came down and said you couldn’t build this place today for under $12 million. The marble and brick would be expensive.
What are the obstacles to you getting the place up and running?
There are code issues. And we have to get a “Yes” before we can buy it. We’re working with an architect to get to that point. We toured the building during an unofficial visit with the city inspector, and at the end of our visit, the inspector and the architect were talking in their language - whatever that is - and we asked the city inspector if we would get a “Yes,” and he said he thought we would. So, we have to do the code assessment, and then take our findings before a committee in Hamilton County, and then take them before the Board of Mechanical Appeals in Nashville to get the “Yes” we need.
Do you have any experience putting something like this together?
My wife and I started a coffee house in Indiana. We took a huge warehouse and turned it into a really amazing thing. Not that we were smart, but we found a lot of people who were. But we love to take old things and make something out of them, and the first time we saw the school here, we had tears in our eyes. The potential of this place and what could happen in this community when we tap into it – wow.
Do have the resources you need to clean up the place, do the necessary repairs, line up with the codes and buy the property?
That’s a great question. And the answer is “Yes” and “No.” We don’t lack manpower. The first time we went in there and looked around, we thought all we’d have to do is paint it and clean it up. Then “asbestos” and all those other scary words came up. But we have the manpower we need. We also know which services we’re going to provide. As for money, we’ve done some fundraising to pay for the architect to do the coding.
What do you need for neighborhood renewal to take place in East Lake?
If neighborhood renewal is going to happen, and if it’s going to stick, it has to be the heart of the people who live here. Our main intention is to see the quality of life and the sense of personal worth and identity in this neighborhood increase. We don’t want to force anyone down that path, but rather want to begin the process and then walk alongside them as it happens. Life is life, though, and sometimes you need help from outside, so we’re going provide the services and say, “We care about you enough to provide with you with a nonprofit pediatrician, we care about you enough to enable you to have your own beauty school, and we care about you enough to enable you to have a community garden.”
What’s the timeline?
This is long process. It’s not going to happen overnight.