2024 Exemplary Project: A piece of architectural history has a purposeful future in downtown Phoenix

Jennifer Dokes, for LISC Phoenix

11.08.2023 — LISC StoriesCommunities on the Linee-Blasts

Interior for the Monroe Abbey March 2020.

Fifty-five years after the First Baptist Church closed its doors in downtown Phoenix and nearly 40 years after a massive fire left it in ruins, the historic landmark is entering a second life as a much-needed third place.

As redevelopment sagas go, the evolution of the church now known as Monroe Street Abbey is one for the ages. Perseverance, stewardship, community development know-how, partnerships and impact investing are why this fascinating story of historic preservation and community building isn’t a tragic one.

Terry Goddard had just begun his first term as mayor of Phoenix in 1984 when a fire caused the church’s roof to collapse. He credits firefighters for working hard to prevent a total loss. The church’s four walls still stand.

“It’s a really beautiful building, even as a ruin,” Goddard said. “It has a sense about it that people are really attracted by.”

In 1992, the city declared the structure, which has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1982, a hazard and scheduled it for demolition. The Housing Opportunity Center, a nonprofit that Goddard helped establish, bought the property at Monroe Street and Third Avenue n 1993 with the intent to convert it to affordable housing.

But all the modifications and upgrades to make the structure, which was built in 1929 and expanded in 1950, suitable for housing would have destroyed the abbey, Goddard said. Instead, HOC built 95 apartment units in the former church parking lot.

When Monroe Street Abbey Apartments was nearly finished in 1995, Goddard described for an Arizona Republic reporter the challenges the nonprofit navigated to build the affordable housing units. “We applied four times with the Federal Home Loan Bank,” he is quoted as saying. “I mean this was the little engine that could. On the fourth try, we made it. It’s an epic tale of persistence.”

Twenty-eight years later, the abbey redevelopment project, put in motion by a $6.6 million loan that closed in early October, is now a next-level tale.

“We’ve gone beyond epic to Homeric, I guess,” Goddard said. “Odysseus’ ten years going home were nothing compared to what we’ve had to do here.”

The idea to convert the abbey space into a quasi-public place for community organizations, private events, or simply hanging out first surfaced in 2018. A garden-in-the-ruins concept took time, effort and collaboration to hammer out.

Financing for the project nearly came together in March 2020, but the pandemic squashed those plans. The same partners — LISC, Arizona Community Foundation and Phoenix Industrial Development Agency — were back at the table this year to complete a financing deal in early October.

Doors of the Monroe Street Abbey project will open in 2024. Goddard said he expects activation of the abbey to complement the arts and entertainment scene in that part of downtown Phoenix.

LISC has been involved with the church site since the development of the adjacent affordable housing project. Its involvement in the current phase helped get financing across the finish, Goddard said.

“I don’t exaggerate by saying that this would not have happened but for the LISC mission of trying to facilitate projects that don’t really fit in the cookie cutter for the regular financial industry,” Goddard said.

“The project is illustrative of LISC,” Goddard said. “This is LISC’s way of doing community development. Nobody else in the financial world does it like this.”

“They clearly were not only the one who stuck with us through all these evolutions from 2018, when we first started talking about this concept – sort of entertainment and food in the church – through the closing, they were the common denominator,” Goddard said. “They obviously believed in what we were trying to do.”

Patrick McNamara, senior program for LISC Phoenix, said projects like preservation of the abbey is what community development finance institutions do. They take on risks to get projects started that traditional banks do not, he said.

“The role of a CDFI is to find those holes in the market and figure out a way to fill them,” McNamara said.

The third-place, public-purpose component of Monroe Street Abbey is something LISC considers important to building strong neighborhoods for residents and small businesses. With all the development activity happening in downtown phoenix, the abbey is an opportunity to hold onto something, McNamara said.

“LISC is a place-based investor,” McNamara said. “We look at not just the project but what it could do for the area. Third places are part of that. … Basically, it’s just a place in your neighborhood that’s not your house or your work, where people come together to meet each other and kibbitz and all of that.”

It helps projects like this to have partners like Arizona Community Foundation that are looking for ways to make community impact. Sarah Liguori, the foundation’s senior director of impact investing, said ACF evaluates impact loans for nonprofit organizations for financial and social impact – the benefit to the community or to the nonprofit.

“From an ACF perspective, we love the (abbey) project because of its historic meaning in the space,” Liguori said. “The affordable housing project that Terry (Goddard) had put together next door is so powerful in that downtown space, and especially right now with our housing crisis.”

That the space inside the abbey will be available to community organizations, nonprofits and other groups to use is another plus, Liguori said.

“We really like that this major monument in a downtown space that sat vacant for so many years is going to be given new life in such a beautiful way, be available to the community again,” Liguori said.

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