Eastmorland Community Center poised for greater neighborhood impact

By Ivy Fan, Eastside News

There’s a small triangle of land in the Eastmorland neighborhood, nestled between Tulane, Hargrove and Ogden streets. On this land sits a modest church building with red brick and white trim and a tall steeple. The building has been there since the 1950s, and if all goes as planned, it will be gone by the end of this summer. Next year the space will be occupied by several apartments and a new home for the Eastmorland Community Center.

The church building is currently home to Common Grace, formed almost four years ago when the congregations of Lakeview Moravian Community Church and Zion Lutheran Church decided to worship together. Lakeview Moravian, the building’s original occupants, first established the church when the Eastmorland neighborhood itself was being developed. Over the decades, the church and neighborhood have grown up together, becoming more interdependent.

When Staci Marrese-Wheeler became pastor of Lakeview Moravian in 2009, the founding pastor advised her: “You need to get out of the church and work with the neighbors. You can accomplish so much more together.”

In the next years, the church opened its doors during the week to a range of neighborhood groups, from local theater productions to a preschool.

Lakeview Moravian and Zion Lutheran began working together through a coalition called Seeds of Peace Madison, formed by several churches on the east side. The pastors of the two churches began to see an opportunity to come together more closely in a way that would allow them to continue serving their communities.

For years, the congregation at Zion Lutheran faced a tough decision — how to continue to be sustainable despite shrinking membership and increasing building costs. Ahead of their annual meeting, pastor Pat Siegler asked church members to bring something that represented “church” to them. One person brought knitting needles from when she learned to knit in a knitting circle there. Others brought stories and memories.

Member Brenda Halverson remembers that they realized that their feeling of church “wasn’t about the physical space itself … and that set us free to reimagine what the property could look like.”

At the same time, Lakeview Moravian continued to offer their building as a community hub, hosting mobile food pantries and the preschool. This would lay the groundwork for what would later become the Eastmorland Community Center, a nonprofit dedicated to creating space for community programs in the Eastmorland neighborhood. In 2021, Zion Lutheran sold its property on Linden Avenue to make way for affordable housing, and the churches officially formed one congregation — Common Grace.

As demand for programs at ECC grew, it became clear the old building might not be able to meet all those needs. The flat roof leaked each spring, while half the basement was still unusable due to past floods. The foundation cracked in places. Despite the combined resources of Common Grace’s two congregations, repairing the building became an insurmountable cost. It became clear: it was time for the structure to be replaced.

Drawing on Zion Lutheran’s prior experience and Lakeview Moravian’s longstanding commitment to the neighborhood, Common Grace saw an opportunity to better serve the community by repurposing the triangle. Instead of holding onto the property, the decision was made to give it up for redevelopment — allowing for the creation of 24 units of affordable workforce housing and a new community center. The apartments would be priced below market rate to support young families and workers early in their career. The community center would include a kitchen, informal gathering places, a performing arts venue and a garden.

With the new building, ECC envisions being able to grow more fully into a hub for local groups to come together. Besides Common Grace using the space for Sunday gatherings, future plans include renting out the kitchen to vendors and offering the performing arts space for Whitehorse Middle School’s graduation. The true heart of ECC’s mission is creating space for people to be together, alleviating isolation through local connection.

After years of planning, ECC launched a capital campaign in earnest in March, with a goal of raising $1.5 million to furnish the new buildings and cover initial operating costs. Construction is set for summer and is expected to last just over a year, ending in early fall of 2026. In the meantime, the existing programs at ECC plan to stay open at other nearby spaces, ensuring the center maintains a strong connection to the neighborhood during the transition.

For Common Grace, the desire to repurpose the property reflects years of connection with their community. They hope their example will inspire other churches to rethink how to make a lasting impact with the resources they have. Though the story begins and ends with brick-and-mortar buildings, the mission has always been about the space within and the people that inhabit it.