Karen Kistler

karen.kistler@salisburypost.com

 

SALISBURY — The sounds of demolition can be heard in the Oestreicher building at 122 S. Main St., Salisbury as plans for the HUB: A Center for Collaboration moves another step closer to becoming a reality.

The five-level building, which will be a central location for nonprofits, has a new owner as Rowan County United Way has purchased the building from David Post, closing on the building in October 2024, said Jenny Lee executive director of Rowan County United Way.

United Way will be one of the anchor tenants of the HUB: A Center for Collaboration with several other anchor tenants, to be announced later, joining them, said Lee. Space for another six to eight small to medium-sized nonprofits will be there, along with onsite storage, break rooms, ADA compliant restrooms, training rooms, a large board room, meeting rooms, catering kitchen and community copy room.

One thing about the HUB, she said, “it’s not just meant for those that are tenants, the main tenants. There are going to be opportunities for other nonprofits to have access to the resources of the HUB as well. It is a community resource center for nonprofits.”

Getting to this point has taken several years,  said Lee and Audrey Eudy, philanthropy director of the United Way, as they shared of working with staff, board and donors to see what their challenges were and realized that if where they are currently located had to repurpose and grow, they “needed to start thinking outside the box.”

Noting this growth would be good for Salisbury, Lee said it is something they wanted to be a part of. 

Thinking that they might not be only ones dealing with this issue, they sent out a survey to other nonprofits and found that 80 percent needed some sort of common space area, and “53 percent of those nonprofits stated that they needed office space, so here we are doing what United Way does or we strive to do in that we’ve recognized a need and it goes beyond just our own need,” said Lee. 

With this information, Lee and Eudy began researching the concept of shared work space and discovered it’s a growing concept across the nation and that “nonprofit community centers are the way of the future,” and are working well in other areas.

They paid a visit to see a nonprofit center first hand in Columbia, S.C., which Lee said was working well.

Through their research, they found that a major benefit is stability for the nonprofits, as she noted since starting at United Way seven years ago, it will be the third time to move, something she said is costly and can cause confusion, to which Eudy added, “it stops productivity.”

Additional benefits would include cost sharing and a savings component, as the tenants could all share in utility costs, internet costs, phone services and janitorial, among others, which Lee said, “lowers our overhead cost which no donor really enjoys paying.”

They want to know that their money is going to help others, whether it’s feeding the hungry, helping those in a domestic violence situation or going through a recovery program helping a veteran not become homeless.

Lee said they knew they wanted to remain in the downtown area, which has created accessibility and visibility for them, which are important aspects to them and the board.

Admitting they didn’t know about commercial buildings, she said they did “what we actually know how to do and put the right people together and see if they will help us to do a site search and to help build out what we want our Rowan County community center to look like because we wanted our nonprofit center to meet the unique needs of this community,” she said.

Noting that the community has great leaders, they reached out to some of these to put together a Task Force to help in making this center a reality. These included Jayne Helms to serve as Realtor, Bill Burgin, Dan Norman and Diane Gibbs with Ramsay Burgin Smith to serve as architects, David Hartman with Vertex Construction to serve as our GC contractor, commercial contractor, 

Josh Barnhardt, downtown developer, and Brad Walser with Walser Technology Group to look at technical needs. 

Lee said this group helped for 2½ years “at no cost, drawing up concept renderings, dreaming, helping us build it.”

David Hartman, president of Vertex Construction, said he was on the task force for two years, and while it was a lengthy process, it was very interesting.

“I think they found the right fit,” said Hartman. “It’s the perfect building for the HUB and I’m just glad to be a part of it.”

“We looked for quite a while at a lot of properties,” said Helms “and finally settled on this one, and it was absolutely the best fit for them.” 

Eudy said they took the Task Force to approximately eight or nine different locations.

Word was getting out about the shared space, Lee said, and therefore, with each new site visit, “we had to grow square footage” as they went from a 6,700-6,800 square ft. space to the current 25,000 square feet, “and my architect is already telling me ‘stop taking in nonprofits. We’ve run out of space.’”

Post said the Rowan County United Way had a good idea how to utilize the whole building. “So I sold it to them at a third of the appraisal.” 

From the second she walked in the Oestreicher building, Lee thought, “we’ve found it. This is it.”

She noted that it is “unique building so it would have to fit a unique idea and I felt that we, our HUB, could provide that unique idea and then bring back life to this 25,000 square foot space in the heart of downtown.”

After negotiations with Post, the building was sold as Eudy said, “he gave us a great price.”

Work commenced with the board and through an internal evaluation process, Lee said that Ramsey Burgin Smith was selected to do the architectural and engineering and then Vertex was selected to do the actual construction.

Danny Norman with Ramsey, Burgin, Smith said they were “excited about helping them get to the end of this goal. He noted that Diane Gibbs has done most of the leg work doing the layout and the plans and he had helped with that.

Miller Davis will be handling the marketing campaign, it was noted.

As for how they plan to market the building, Eudy said, “it’s a community building. We just happen to be the people that are going to own it, but it’s for our community, for our nonprofit sector and for all those who are looking for help in this community. So that’s how we came up with the HUB. It was just a central place.” 

Lee noted the business plan has worked in other communities as cost savings space. 

“What we get back in rent will help take care of our overhead,” and not have to pay insurance or salaries.

“We can now say every dollar that is raised in Rowan County will stay in Rowan County and every dollar that goes to the annual campaign will be pushed right back out through our grants making community impact process, which has been a dream for us.”

This combined community space will help with stability and sustainability, help reinvest donor dollars and reduce overhead costs, and being together and having conversations would help them come up with ideas that “make Rowan County stronger and healthier” and they can work so as not to duplicate efforts, which is a huge outcome, Lee said.

She also noted an economic footprint because of all the families that would be part of the programs and they would go out to eat and visit the park and “be a part of the downtown fabric.”

Post noted that while it has been taken off the tax roll and that tax money would be lost, he said there were only two employees before, and now there would be 45-50 people in the building going out to buy lunch and go shopping instead of just those two.

“Even though it comes off the tax roll, I believe it will significantly benefit downtown Salisbury,” he said.

Another important piece of the project, Lee noted is the capital campaign, which she said, “is historically the only capital campaign that we have embarked on and hopefully it will be the only capital campaign that we embark on.”

Their fundraising goal is $5.5 million, and thanks to the contributions of the Task Force to the project, the overall fundraising goal has been reduced.

They also announced that they had received a large $200,000 challenge grant from the Julian and Blanche Family Foundation. 

“The board of that family foundation felt that they wanted to be a part of this and that they hoped that this would help to generate more excitement knowing that we had a match of your dollars,” said Lee. “We’re very grateful for their faith in this project and their willingness to support it and to support this very unique need and program.”

Those wishing to make a donation to the capital campaign can contact Lee or Eudy at the Rowan County United Way office.

Lee said they plan on diversifying their asks for funds, including private, public, federal and state, and Eudy said, also in and out of county, and in and out of state.

There will be a donor wall in the building, she said, as they will have naming opportunities and want a place to thank all of the donors “and have their names on the wall for making this happen and we will make sure that that donor wall is seen and that it is bright and it matters and that people walk by it all the time and they helped make this happen.”

They also stressed that this capital campaign money and their annual fall campaign funds would be separate and would remain separate, but also shared they would continue having the fall campaign.

“We have to because the programs, the services are so important to a lot of people in this community and we can’t stop doing that job. That is why we’re here,” said Eudy. 

She added that it’s also important to know “we own the building outright, there’s not a mortgage on the building.”

Lee noted they held a fundraiser several years ago which raised enough to pay for the building outright.

Therefore the $5.5 million capital campaign goal does not include the purchase of it, she said, but includes construction costs, architectural and engineering work, building office walls and furnishing the building.

“And we want to make sure that they have a very energy efficient building work space, a safe space to work in. That’s why we’ve had a lot of our anchor tenants be a part of the drawing of the different schemes and plans for the building and that the technology is adequate for their needs,” said Lee,

Brad Walser with Walser Technologies said, “it’s wonderful to see progress for the future home of the Rowan County HUB. It was a long process to find the right building but I’m happy we were able to find them something suitable in our downtown.”

Work to this point has included abatement and demolition, Eudy noted. Following demolition, which should be complete in two weeks, Lee said they would go through the process of getting construction documents, and continue work with the historic preservation commission.

Construction is planned to kick off by the end of September and 12 months and is anticipated to be completed by the end of 2026.

Another wall planned, Lee said, is one honoring the history of the building and families. Eudy has been researching and meeting with families who are connected to the building to learn that history.