Pontiac’s Webster elementary set for new life as community hub

Sherri Welch is a senior reporter for Crain’s Detroit Business covering nonprofits, philanthropy, higher education and arts and culture. Before joining Crain’s in 2003, she covered automotive suppliers and tire makers for Crain’s Rubber & Plastics News.

The Michigan Strategic Fund Board on Tuesday awarded $12.6 million to a project that will convert a shuttered, historic elementary school in Pontiac into a community services hub offering a health center and grocery store, among other services, to residents.

The funding to Micah 6 Community, a 501(c)3 community development corporation working on the west side of Pontiac, includes a Michigan Community Revitalization Program performance-based loan of up to $7.6 million and a $5 million revitalization and placemaking grant.

It's the final piece needed to move forward with the $28.2 million adaptive reuse project which will convert the historic Elmer R. Webster Elementary School into the Webster Community Center.

Environmental and remediation studies and abatement have been completed on the 1921 building, which played a central role in desegregation in the city in 1971 and has been closed since 2007, Executive Director Coleman Yoakum said.

Work inside the school is set to begin in October and wrap up by the first quarter of 2025.

When complete, the center will include a small grocery store and a food co-op, a walk-in health center operated by Honor Health, Head Start classrooms, arts programs for the developmentally disabled, theater performances, satellite courses offered by Rochester University to help residents earn an associate's degree and an indoor bus terminal operated by SMART in collaboration with the Michigan Department of Transportation.

Many of those services are currently scattered across the city and county, Yoakum said.

"To bring those into the center of the neighborhood makes life easier (and) all of these services more accessible," he said.

The project will eliminate "a lot of the barriers and surprise struggles a lot of my neighbors live with every day that make getting to these services, to these organizations difficult."

Pontiac used to have six community centers; now it has none, Yoakum said. Yet the need for one has come up a lot in the city's strategic, land use and parks and recreation plans.

"We keep hearing this over and over again, but nobody is working on building new community centers. So we'll do that," Yoakum said.

Located at 640 W. Huron on M-59 near Telegraph, the center is located on bus routes at major intersections, Yoakum said.

It was designed by Chicago architectural firm Perkins, Fellows and Hamilton. Dwight Perkins designed schools across the country and wrote textbooks about it, Coleman said. He was often checked in his bid to design elaborate locations, but Webster is the closest example of his fully realized dream.

The school includes 26 classrooms, a kitchen, stage and among other opulent features, red marble stall walls and panels in school bathrooms, six skylights and a large gym in the heart of the building.

Micah agreed to buy the 53,714-square-foot school building and the 4.8 acres it sits on in 2017 on a land contract from Pontiac Investment Corp. for $200,000 but had paid just $58,000 when the company forgave the rest of the loan and threw in another school building, Emerson Elementary, at no additional charge, Yoakum said.

It has the remaining commitments needed to make the Webster Community Center a reality. They include a mix of new market and historic tax credits, $2 million in American Rescue Plan Act funding from the county, $425,000 from the state's Environmental Great Lakes and Energy and millions in grants from foundations and funders including Ballmer Group, the Carls Foundation, the Pontiac Funders Collaborative, the Ralph C. Wilson Jr. Foundation, Total Health Care Foundation and the William Davidson Foundation.

Through a community hub model akin to that nonprofit Life Remodeled developed in a former school building in Detroit, the Webster Community Center has leased all of the available space in the building to about a dozen tenants informed by the needs of the community.

The Pontiac Community Foundation has leased two classrooms to operate a neighborhood business incubator.

Multiple other tenants have committed to taking space in the building including Rochester University, Oakland Livingston Human Service Agency with Head Start, SMART, Honor Health, Art Experience, Accent Pontiac, Yaktown Yoga, Sprout Food Store, and Plain and Fancy Food, a bakery and coffee shop.

Outside, plans call for an athletic field, playground, three greenhouses, a large community garden and an outdoor pavilion in the courtyard area for community events.

Micah 6 will also operate a food co-op to provide cheaper food to eligible participants in the federal Women, Infants and Children food assistance program, Yoakum said. And the building, added to the National Register of Historic Places in June 2022, will feature a number of permanent displays about the role it played in busing and permanent desegregation.

CBI Design Professionals is architect on the project and Spence Brothers Construction is general contractor.

"We had the idea to turn (the school) into a hub," Yoakum said, but he and his team were encouraged by others to talk with Detroit-based Life Remodeled about its Durfee Innovation Society project.

"In terms of proof of concept, this can work. We are are incredibly indebted to Life Remodeled (for showing) this can work and that it can be sustainable for the longterm," he said.

Editor's Note: A former version of this story incorrectly said Webster Elementary was named a historic national landmark; it was added to the National Register of Historic Places.