ELY- A dream many years in the making is about to come true for the Ely Area Community Foundation. On Aug. 1, the EACF will officially open the Community Hub, a 16,000-square-foot facility at 760 Miners Drive. The facility will have a mix of commercial and nonprofit tenants who focus on community health and wellness.
To celebrate its success after years of effort, the EACF will hold an open house next Wednesday, July 31, from 4-7 p.m. at the hub. The opening ceremony is set for 5:15 p.m. and staff from U.S. Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith, will be on hand to present remarks from the senators at the event.
“The open house is open to the public,” said Jeff Sundell, chair of the EACF board of directors. “We will have food and live music provided by Andy Messerschmidt and his band. EACF has also hired two food trucks to serve the food for the event.”
Those attending the open house can tour the facility before the tenants open for business the next day.
The Community Hub
Earlier this week, the new Community Hub was, quite literally, a hub of activity, with Ely’s building and fire inspectors at work as tenants moved in and construction workers finished up last-minute details.
Converting the building into a multi-use facility focused on community health and wellbeing is a departure from the facility’s original use. The building began life as an office building for the Minnesota Department of Revenue, but the state moved its workers out of the building to work remotely during the COVID pandemic and they never returned. The Department of Revenue converted its Ely employees to remote workers and put the facility on the surplus property list in December 2022.
The surplus property status made it possible for Ely to buy the building directly from the state without going to auction. On the same day that Ely bought the building, Dec. 8, 2022, it sold it immediately to EACF.
EACF already had a day care and a gym lined up as tenants when they assumed ownership of the building. The group has since added two more tenants, the nonprofits Well Being Development and Northwoods Partners.
Happy Days Learning Center is a nonprofit daycare provider. The move into the Community Hub allowed Happy Days to expand its capacity to 40 children. Its new space gives the daycare provider three classrooms, offices, utility spaces, a fenced playground, and access to the Hub’s kitchen. The center will open its new location on Aug. 1.
Local gym Functional Fitness will move into a suite of rooms in the northeast corner of the building. The largest room at the gym will house its exercise equipment. The gym will also include a yoga and exercise space, two therapy rooms, and a smoothie bar.
Well Being Development will move into a suite of two offices and a conference room in the center of the Community Hub. The nonprofit provides a variety of mental health services to the Ely area. The group’s office has moved twice in less than two years. Moving into the Community Hub will give Well Being Development a permanent, comfortable office for the first time in several years.
The nonprofit Northwoods Partners provides services to seniors and their caregivers in Ely, Winton, Babbitt, Tower, Soudan, and surrounding areas. The nonprofit is moving into a suite in the southeast corner of the Community Hub with two offices and a large conference room. For the group’s activities like the Tasty Tuesdays cooking classes, Northwoods Partners will use the Hub’s kitchen.
Between Functional Fitness and Happy Days, the Community Hub has one large unleased 2,800-square-foot space. “There isn’t another large space like this in Ely,” Sundell explained. “We would welcome groups wanting to use this space for meetings and events.”
Years of waiting
The Community Hub isn’t the first building EACF wanted to purchase. In 2019, the nonprofit had its eyes on a similar facility near the Ely-Bloomenson Community Hospital and had already entered into a memo of understanding for its acquisition.
“Then COVID hit and destroyed all that,” Jeff Sundell, the EACF board chair told the Timberjay in November 2022. The organization still had access to a $5 million donation made several years earlier which made it possible to move forward on securing the Revenue Building instead.