Allegra Williams stumbled across the Crossover Sports Association a few years back when she was looking for a little league football team.

Fast forwarding to 2022 finds Williams and four of her sons active members of the Crossover community. They are all excitedly awaiting the estimated August 2023 completion of the Crossover Community Center which is planned for 36th St. N. and Peoria Ave. The project was recently approved for a $19 million allocation of New Markets Tax Credits (NMTC) from the nonprofit, MetaFund. The tax credits incentivized private investment from US Bank and created a subsidy which closed Crossover’s fundraising gap to develop the new community center.

With a vision statement that includes the phrase Restoring Our Community, the nonprofit is tackling the issues living in their backyard. Their goal is for their community to become one brimming with healthy individuals, faithful families, peaceful neighborhoods, and thriving institutions.

Through their network of multifaceted ministries, members of Crossover Bible Church and their affiliated nonprofit have been operating a medical clinic, after school and summer programs for kids, youth jobs program, athletic programs, schools, and an affordable housing development company as a holistic approach to the problems in their area.

Williams became so involved with her sons’ activities, she was offered a part-time job with the church. She is also active in the Lion’s Den, an organization geared toward encouraging parents to interact with students at the school. When Crossover opened their health care clinic, Williams was excited because it provided local services, reducing her drive time to receive health care. Now, she is really excited about the coming community center. The center will house multiple Crossover-affiliated community development programs including:

• Crossover Health Services’ programs for the family medical clinic, which will be located next door and whose client capacity will increase from 8,000 to 24,000 with the community center.
• Crossover Preparatory Academy, an all-boys, 6 – 12th grade, tuition-free private school. The community center will provide a permanent home for the school and expand their student capacity from 135 to 315;
• Crossover Kids and StreetLeaders Programs offer tutoring, after-school, and summer day camp STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math) programs serving students from the surrounding schools, while simultaneously creating jobs for high school students. The center will provide a permanent home allowing them to increase capacity from 50 to 180 elementary age students and 10 to 30 high school students while providing library and computer resources not currently available for Pre-K through 12 graders;
• Crossover Development Company’s Personal Finance classes, which will help individuals in the community become homeowners of the revitalized and new homes Crossover constructs. Construction job certification courses will also occur at the community center helping individuals in the community become certified through the National Center for Construction Education and Research;
• Crossover Sports Association provides extracurricular youth sports and wellness programs to the surrounding community. The new center will provide 2 full-sized basketball courts, a weight training center, and cardio rooms, allowing the organization to begin serving 500 families, including teens and adults.

Construction on The project is expected to begin in the middle of May. Estimates show that it will create 100 temporary construction jobs as it’s being built and at least 59 new full-time jobs when the center opens.