Goodwill’s new Elkhart location set to open early 2025
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Goodwill Industries of Michiana expects to open its new facility in Elkhart’s Neighborhood Opportunity Hub by early 2025. The project will house most of the not-for-profit’s services in the city under one roof.
Located in the Woodland Crossing Shopping Center, formerly known as the Pierre Moran Mall, Goodwill partnered with Heart City Health to purchase the abandoned Sears building. Heart City plans to open a comprehensive health facility on its side of the building, including urgent care.
“Heart City Health and Goodwill each needed about half of the building, so it worked out beautifully, because we tend to serve the same people in the community,” Debie Coble, president of Goodwill Michiana said. “So as we are working with people on their workforce development skills or education and we see a healthcare need, we can refer them right next door and vice versa.”
Officials broke ground on the 109,000-square-foot building at 154 West Hively Avenue last month.
Goodwill’s Excel Center, The Academy, Nurse-Family Partnership, Second Chance and its Ability First programs will move to the new location while the organization’s Career Center remains at its Concord Store in Elkhart, Coble noted.
With over 60% of residents in the area making under $50,000 annually, Goodwill hopes to help bring stability and growth in workforce development for south-central Elkhart residents. The area is also home to 65% of school age kids, city officials said.
“Both organizations have been expanding and literally creating transformative change for the clients that they serve,” Elkhart Mayor Rod Roberson said. “The Sears space was opportune for the both of them to partner together and they quite frankly had already been partnering together. This allows them to bring that partnership under one roof and begin to service that community as a whole.”
After identifying the Woodland Crossing area as a key area for his administration in 2020, Roberson focused on job and occupational skills training, health outcomes, educational outcomes, and housing opportunities.
The city was also instrumental in facilitating the building purchase from the Woodland Crossing holding group as part of its master plan for the 11-acre site.
“We’re pretty excited about what this can become, with the two not-for-profits being an anchor along with Kroger, CVS, Key Bank and multiple tenants that offer services,” Roberson said. “That’s the real thrust of what we’re defining as an opportunity hub for the entire area to be able to use as a focal point for services and for resource information. We hope that would help grow the skill strength and the educational acumen in that area as well.”
The city is seeking developers to revitalize the area’s blighted properties and add to the area’s residential stock as well as a mix of not-for-profit, corporate and business partners to provide services and jobs to residents.
“Our effort is to restore what we can and ensure that we incentivize residential growth and where appropriate, small business opportunities will abound as well,” Roberson said. “We need to be able to provide the right type of services in order to make sure that families don’t have to travel long distances to reach those services.”
As part of its partnership with Goodwill, the city has contracted with the not-for-profit to provide workforce development training. The organization will work to connect trainees with local employers.
Goodwill was able to purchase its part of the building because of a $10 million gift from Mackenzie Scott in 2019.
“Our board of directors made the decision that we were only going to use this money to support missions,” Coble said. “We’ve used the majority of the money to do capital projects to help us leverage the work in the mission world.”
The organization is still fundraising and invites donors to join them in their effort to elevate the quality of life in south central Elkhart.
“It was a lengthy project process to get the building and so we did not start doing fundraising. So one of the challenges is the fact that we’re a little behind in raising money for it,” Coble said. “We continue to look for businesses or individuals that want to help us be part of this mission to get this building up and going because it’s going to benefit Elkhart tremendously.”
While Elkhart’s neighborhood growth strategy includes talent attraction, job opportunities, and investment in quality spaces, Roberson added that his administration is being intentional about ensuring long time residents the continued ability to afford to live in the area as it grows.
“We have residents that have been there for generations, and that generational diversity is so critical to the viability of a neighborhood; we want to make sure we keep it,” he said. “Access is one of the foremost metrics that we’re going to look at to make sure that we’re providing spaces for people to find their way to Elkhart and live in a very safe, attractive neighborhood that’s close to a lot of amenities.”
Coble plans to form a business roundtable to get recommendations from employers about necessary skills they need in employees.
“What do we need to be training for as we look at bringing career and technical education into Elkhart County? What do employers need from us to help folks get ready to go into their company?” Coble said the organization will be seeking answers to. “If there’s any that are interested in being a part of this, they can definitely get a hold of me. We’d love to have a conversation.”
Currently serving more than 200 students, Goodwill is outgrowing its current Excel Center on Pierre Street, which is one of the driving forces for the move to the new facility.
The Excel Center, one of Goodwill’s flagship services, provides free education to Elkhart residents who are 18 and older and want to get a high school diploma. The center helps applicants retrieve their records from their previous schools and assesses their reading, writing and math skills to determine what grade they start at.
The program also offers special education services for people who may need them and also provides life coaches, which serve as both case managers and guidance counselors.
“While they’re going through classes, we have them either do dual-credit through Ivy Tech or do a certification for a skill that’s in demand in Elkhart County, based upon what the Department of Education says we can do,” Coble added. “If they need help finding employment, we help with that. If they want to go on to college, we also help them.”
With the Excel Center on the trolley line, Coble said one of the two major hindrances to folks getting their diplomas is eliminated. The other is child care. Parents can drop off their kids under 7 years old at the Excel Center’s kindergarten.
“So while mom and dad are getting their high school diploma, we’re helping the littles get ready for kindergarten, which just gives that child a tremendous leg up,” Coble added. “Interesting statistic, a parent who has a high school diploma, their child is 50% less likely to drop out of high school. It’s a game changer for the family.”
The Woodland Crossing Neighborhood Opportunity Hub is part of the Thrive Elkhart 2040 plan. City government received input from residents on needed amenities, challenges and future growth opportunities for the area
“In our last charrette, we had some people leaving with some very, very broad smiles on their faces that the city was finally seeing that area as a potential asset and was willing to invest in it,” Roberson said. “What we’re doing with the opportunity hub…is coalesced in our city plan that speaks to public safety, infrastructure and quality of place. That’s our Aspire plan tagged ‘Elkhart’s Tomorrow Starting Today.’”
These improvements follow the successful revitalization of the city’s River District through various anchor projects including the Elkhart Health & Aquatics Center and the Stonewater Apartment Complex.
“The River District has grown immensely due to the anchors and assets that the city worked hard to partner and provide,” Roberson said. “We’re doing the same thing with different partners and different anchors in the South-Central area and I want the rest of the city to know.”
The city of Elkhart, Goodwill and Heart City Health will put in a joint application for funding from the state’s Regional Economic and Acceleration Development Initiative, or READI 2.0. As a top level goal, they hope to have impacted 50,000 lives yearly by 2033.
“We want to help folks get that right job, get the skill set that they need, and go on to live their most abundant lives, not just chasing minimum wage,” Coble added. “We want to be one of the pipelines for employers because we have folks that are skilled and trained, and they’re ready to help that employer succeed in their business.”
The city hopes to continue to enter into more public private partnerships like this one to steamroll its revitalization efforts.
“This is a model in revitalization, repurposing, recreating the opportunity for growth in an older legacy neighborhood or city within the Midwest, that was and still is a manufacturing hub,” Roberson said. “We believe that this is the kind of project that is exciting for our state, our count, our city and this particular neighborhood in very profound ways.”