CLUES moves food service, child care to old church site

For years, First Lutheran Church in St. Paul’s Dayton’s Bluff rented its education building at 461 Maria Ave. to a handful of nonprofits like the East Side Elders program and Urban Roots.

Over the past year or more, the social service organization CLUES has gradually outfitted the former school building for new uses, including parenting classes, a weekly food shelf and privately run family child care rooms that will soon be operated by Spanish-speaking providers.

CLUES’ newly expanded business-incubation program arrived at just the right time for Evelyn Polanco, one of the four providers getting ready to hang their own shingle and open their own child care shop.

”It’s a dream I presented to God,” said Polanco on Monday, in Spanish. To offer child care, “the place where I live, it’s too small.”

‘Story of many immigrants’

After obtaining a degree in preschool education in Guatemala 20 years ago, Polanco went on to become a licensed nurse in her home country, which would take seven more years of schooling and hospital work.

She would then spend another seven years caring for small children in child care centers throughout the Twin Cities metro, where she was arguably overqualified for her jobs but held back by a language barrier. She speaks Spanish, not English.

Undeterred, Polanco never gave up her dream of opening her own Spanish-immersion child care program — an effort that is paying off this month in the Maria Avenue building.

Ruby Lee, president and chief executive officer at CLUES, said barriers like language, licensing, startup space and starting capital hold back many worthy entrepreneurs in the Latin community.

“It’s the story of many immigrants,” Lee said. “She doesn’t own a home where she could run a child care center. She’s the type of family child care provider we had in mind, where they live in a site that cannot be certified.”

A prayer answered

For years, the Rev. Chris Olson Bingea and her partner, Brenda Olson Bingea, prayed for an opportunity to transition First Lutheran Church to the 21st century. For the couple, that meant more than just a little tender loving care and some minor construction improvements.

It meant selling off the church’s former Maria Avenue school building for a variety of new uses geared toward a growing immigrant population.

Funds from the sale have gone to renovate First Lutheran for three culturally specific congregations that will soon outfit the church with new services targeted to their own communities.

“It feels like outreach is continuing through better and more prepared hands,” said Brenda Olson Bingea, First Lutheran’s development director. “This neighborhood is changing. Now this (education building) is going to be Latin-owned. Our work continues through the business incubator and the food basket, which draws volunteers from the church.”

Programs outgrew E. 7th Street site

Spanning more than 27,000 square feet and located directly across from First Lutheran, the two-story building at 461 Maria Ave. was built in 1964. It was sold in September of last year for $1.5 million to CLUES, or Comunidades Latinas Unidas En Servicio (Latin Communities United in Service), which is based a half-mile up the road on East Seventh Street.

Administrators with CLUES found that their healthy food program, family services and parenting classes had outgrown their headquarters at 797 E. Seventh St., which still hosts economic development initiatives, a “teen tech” room, arts, educational enrichment and youth programs, and also rents spaces to the Mexican consulate.

The nonprofit also has partnered with a behavioral health clinic to offer a variety of mental health and substance abuse services in St. Paul and Minneapolis.

With funding from the Bush Foundation, the child care businesses — three of them run by Latinas — will have a year to find their footing before monthly rents kick in. CLUES will provide help with marketing and other “wrap-around” micro-business development training over the life of the three-year incubation program, said Lee, with the expectation they’ll each relocate to community spaces down the line and make room for the next cohort.

For the three-year program, four child care providers were selected from about 15 applicants.

“The second year, they’re able to start paying us rent,” Lee said.

Mental health services, food access

The Maria Avenue building also hosts Canasta Familiar, a weekly food shelf organized like a natural foods store, which offers regularly scheduled hours in St. Paul, Minneapolis and at Riverland Community College in Austin, Minn. Canasta Familiar arrived in late July.

Neighborhood surveys conducted by nonprofit partners and the church itself identified mental health services and food access as widespread community needs.