Community Development

For fifteen years, ONEplace has played a vital role in strengthening the capacity of nonprofit organizations throughout Kalamazoo County. With over 250 local nonprofits participating in programs and services annually, ONEplace serves as a critical resource for supporting skill-building and expanding leadership capabilities that prepare these organizations to maximize their impact.

In the last year, ONEplace supported over 3,400 individuals working or volunteering in the nonprofit sector. Our Core offerings include the ONEplace Emerging Leader Academy, Transformative Leadership Cohort, Workshops, technical assistance and nonprofit resources. Services are offered at no cost to participants thanks to our generous funding partners. The transformative impact of ONEplace’s work is backed by data. A comprehensive two-year evaluation was conducted by Western Michigan University’s Evaluation Center and found that ONEplace’s programs are highly effective and create meaningful impacts for participants.

By investing in nonprofit leadership, equity, governance, operational excellence and overall organizational strength, ONEplace fortifies the Kalamazoo nonprofit ecosystem. Our capacity-building efforts ensure local organizations can deliver maximum value to the communities they serve through effective programs, sustainable operations and cause-driven impact.

For more information, visit: www.kpl.gov/ONEplace

When people think of the Kalamazoo Nature Center (KNC), it’s usually our 14 miles of trails and 1,100 acres of forest and prairie that come to mind. Yet it’s our Visitor Center, designed in 1962 by Alden B. Dow, that brings the outside in. Its domed roof, round shape and angular lines embody the natural harmony of mid-century modern design.

After 64 years, the Visitor Center was showing its age until the Irving S. Gilmore Foundation and others made much-needed renovations possible.

The first step was to replace the iconic dome and roof. The double-pane glass on the new dome provides major savings in energy costs compared to the old single-pane glass. Adding four inches of foam insulation under the new roof also contributes to energy savings. All these upgrades help advance KNC’s mission of becoming carbon neutral by 2035.

Inside the Visitor Center, we have milled and polished the concrete floor, installed engineered hardwood and added acoustic materials to reduce echo. These changes improve the visitor experience for our 100,000-plusannual guests and are essential as we shift to museum-quality traveling exhibits.

The Visitor Center renovation has restored an architectural masterpiece and added new possibilities for hands-on educational encounters with nature. By bringing the outside in, we make it more accessible for all.

For more information, visit: www.naturecenter.org

Kalamazoo Experiential Learning Center (KELC) connects college students to our community. Our ability to produce events is based on four key principles: educate, collaborate, innovate and reward. When there is a challenge, we thrive. It’s boots on the streets and laughter without fear of the future. This is experiential learning.

In 2023, our team created a three-event series specifically designed to reimagine the Arcadia Creek Festival Place (ACFP). The five-hour popup series, called Festival Fridays, resembled a festival with live bands, merchandise vendors, food trucks and beverages. The education that it provided helped other festivals imagine their festival at ACFP. It’s challenging to host a festival, but by being at the events, they witnessed proper setup and design, tricks-of-the-trades and how to connect event plans to implementation. They could feel the vision of their festival.

However, it didn’t stop there. Our college students showed how to innovate decorations, games and activities, and support vendor engagement that created a well-connected pop-up festival. The reward was that through this opportunity to intentionally give a “hand” to other event coordinators, we could create believability. Events are empowered through believing that you can create and execute your vision.

At KELC, we are inspired to re-imagine. Event opportunities are brought to Western Michigan University classrooms for event management students to explore the challenge, research trends and KPI’s, and then imagine the possibilities of the event concept. It’s more than just “Town & Gown.” Event imagination requires knowledge, collaboration, innovation and rewards that drive individuals to take on the challenge.

For more information, visit: www.experientiallearningcenter.org

Downtown Kalamazoo came alive with the sights and sounds of the season in December 2022. To kick off the holiday season, Santa and Mrs. Claus joined residents at the annual tree lighting ceremony and took a stroll with the Mayor through the iconic Candy Cane Lanes as Bronson Park lit up with thousands of lights.
This was just one of the many holiday events supported through the generosity of the Irving S Gilmore Foundation. Santa’s Workshop provided a safe and fun way to celebrate the season and make sure Santa got wish lists from more than 4,000 children in time to deliver. Downtown merchants held special events to celebrate with residents and the pedestrian mall was lit up with more than 80,000 lights. Residents were also allowed to ride in style as the Holly Jolly Trolley provided free transportation across the Downtown network. It truly was a season to remember – community-building at its best – and residents and visitors alike kept the Kalamazoo holiday tradition alive this year.

Since 1988, Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) has collaborated with local and national stakeholders to invest in Kalamazoo County, contributing over $140 million in outside investment in Kalamazoo’s core neighborhoods in the form of grants, low-income tax credits, new market tax credits, small business lending capital, and federal and state funding. As a comprehensive Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI), LISC works across sectors to address the interconnected factors that influence inequality of opportunity.

LISC’s comprehensive programmatic approach combines people and place-based efforts, which we conduct with and through a local network of community-based partners, with the ultimate goal of making Kalamazoo County a great place to live, work, visit, do business and raise families. We do this by:
• strengthening existing alliances while building new collaborations to increase our impact on the progress of people and places;
• developing leadership and the capacity of partners to advance our work together;
• equipping talent in underinvested communities with the skills and credentials to compete successfully for quality income and wealth opportunities;
• investing in businesses, housing and other community infrastructure to catalyze economic, health, safety and educational mobility; and
• driving local, regional, and national policy and system changes that foster broadly shared prosperity and well-being.

In 2022, LISC leveraged local support to secure $8 million in additional resources for Kalamazoo County.

For more information, visit www.lisc.org/kalamazoo

While planning for the 2020 Holiday events in spring 2020, our community was hopeful that the COVID-19 pandemic would have run its course by November. We were greatly mistaken. As positive COVID-19 cases increased throughout the summer, the Kalamazoo Downtown Partnership, leaning heavily on Kalamazoo County Health Department guidelines, determined that it was not safe to proceed with the 2020 Kalamazoo Holiday Parade or the Holly Jolly Trolley.

With the cancellation of two well-attended holiday events, we understood that it was critical to the ongoing economic recovery of our downtown businesses to offer other safe opportunities that would attract visitors to downtown Kalamazoo. With the help of several partners, including the Irving S. Gilmore Foundation, the City of Kalamazoo, the Radisson Plaza Hotel, Consumers Energy and Meijer, we successfully offered 17 days of 2020 holiday programming.

“Santa Sightings” offered outdoor, safe visits with Santa and Mrs. Claus. Black Santa returned with increased program hours, and Black Mrs. Claus made her debut! Seven businesses partnered to help distribute two-thousand Santa Letter Kits to downtown visitors, giving them a variety of activities for children to do at home. Plus, Santa mailboxes were placed throughout downtown, encouraging repeat visits.

Twenty block faces were decorated with holiday tree lights, and a new 12-foot wreath offered photo ops. An outdoor holiday market, offered every Saturday in December, hosted 51 vendors, of which 91 percent were minority- or woman-owned. Businesses reported that 2020 sales were equal to or higher than the 2019 holiday season. 

For more information, visit www.downtownkalamazoo.org

KYD Network’s Community Learning Hubs are located at various sites around the city of Kalamazoo, supporting K-12 students in person with their virtual learning. The purpose of the art therapy in the Hubs is to educate youth on SEL (Social Emotional Learning) skills through an art lens.

Art therapy is a healing technique that involves making art through creative expression. It is about letting go and creating something; you do not need to be an “artist” to do these activities and with an art therapy outlook, everyone is an artist. The art therapy sessions are an hour long and consist of an inclusion activity in the beginning, an in-depth look at one of the eight SEL skills and how to apply it to the art technique we are doing that day, the art technique itself, and then a small reflection to sum up how the youth felt the session went.

Since we are living in a pandemic, our young visitors have been adjusting to the new normal, which involves wearing masks and social distancing. Despite the pandemic, the youth at the learning hubs are always enthusiastic and thoughtful when it comes to making art. Over the course of time that we’ve been doing art therapy at the learning hubs, the youth have created some really amazing pieces of art that they are able to share with their friends, peers and family members!

For more information, visit www.kydnet.org

The Kalamazoo Farmers’ Market on Bank Street in the Edison Neighborhood attracts several thousand residents every Saturday from May through November. This popular activity provides residents and non-residents with fresh fruit, vegetables, meats, cheeses, pastries, delicious food truck cuisine, and a variety of handmade crafts and artisan items.

The market is a place where many Kalamazooans do much of their weekly grocery shopping, visit with neighbors, enjoy live music, and support their local economy. Monthly night markets on Thursdays have turned into a great event for the community with live entertainment and activities for families.

The City of Kalamazoo and key partners like the People’s Food Co-op have been working for several years on improvements to the market. The City has convened numerous meetings with stakeholders to determine desired improvements and upgrades for the site. A plan was finalized in 2019 that includes upgrading existing vendor sheds, constructing a new vendor shed along the western edge of the site, improving parking, upgrading the restroom/office/storage building, creating a fruit and vegetable-themed playground, adding an indoor market event building, and realigning Bank Street and the Kalamazoo River Valley Trail.

Phase I construction will begin September 8, 2020, and will include upgrades to existing vendor sheds and the restroom/office/storage building, the new vendor shed to the west, new concrete/asphalt paving in some areas and the realignment of Bank Street.

For more information, visit www.kzooparks.org/farmersmarket

Vibrant Kalamazoo supports the Kalamazoo County Land Bank’s work to “Repurpose, Renew and Reconnect” abandoned and blighted properties in Kalamazoo County. Our shared goal is a county where residents in every zip code enjoy economic stability and quality of life. 

Vibrant recently supported the community-defined and embraced Eastside Gateway and  Pocket Park, a mixed-income, energy-efficient, small housing development on East Main Street and Foresmen Avenue. This project is the neighborhood’s first new construction housing development in over 50 years. The Gateway was the result of intensive community engagement and the generous support of more than 50 local partners. Over 200 people attended the Open House & Eastside Celebration in May 2019 to celebrate its near-completion.

As a community that has at times felt forgotten, Eastside residents feel a resurgence of neighborhood pride. Eastside stories were showcased in an intergenerational oral history project, Eastside Voices, a companion Gateway project co-sponsored by the Eastside Neighborhood Association and co-coordinated by artists Buddy Hannah and Sid Ellis. Art elements inspired by the stories are featured in the Eastside Gateway and Pocket Park  and in a mural at 1616 East Main, future home of Eastside Square, a mixed-use development of affordable, energy-efficient housing units, commercial space, and a pocket plaza, also envisioned by residents.

Vibrant’s work is uplifting Eastside voices through story, art and new developments that represent the community’s vision in residents’ own words of a “can do,” “safe,” “warm,” neighborhood with additions that “blend in, but stand out” and “reflect the comforts of home.”

For more information, visit www.kalamazoolandbank.org/

Douglass Community Association has two youth programs: Douglass Young Men of Promise and Girls Inventing Real Life Solutions. These are both offered after school.

Douglass Young Men of Promise was created after Grad Nation Summit in which young men expressed a desire for a program in which they received mentoring programming that was reflective of who they were and also who they could be. The youth expressed a need for connection with men in the community and an opportunity to connect in ways they had not before. Through this program young men are connected with men in the community who can show them their options for opportunity while also simply showing up to support the youth who are present. The end goal of the program is to assist the young men in obtaining their “promise.”

Girls Inventing Real Life Solutions is designed for girls to have a strong sense of self in a world in which they are bombarded with messages that tell them that will never measure up. This program is about affirmation and connection to the community and one another. The work that is done is both trauma informed and culturally relevant. Girls are connected with women in various careers and provided opportunity to explore what it means to be who they are in a judgment-free environment.

Youth voice is the most important aspect of both of these groups. The young men and the young women both have input into the design and many times the day-to-day of what they will receive from participating. Youth participate in volunteer/community service within the community in which they reside. This creates a sense of responsibility for one’s own environment. We are reaching youth ages 13 – 25. The youth also participate in social-justice learning opportunities. Creating equity in opportunity for those who need it most, that is Douglass Young Men of Promise and Girls Inventing Real Life Solutions.

For more information, visit www.dcakalamazoo.com.