The Pleasant Grove Redevelopment Project marks a major step in restoring and reimagining one of Wendell’s most historically significant African American community sites, centered on the former Carver School and Pleasant Grove Community Church campus.
The campus includes a 3.15-acre site, with a western building constructed between 1949 and 1959, currently known as the Carver Center, which today houses a daycare and a community food pantry. To the east stands the former Carver School building, built by 1949 on the site of an earlier Rosenwald School that was destroyed by fire in the 1940s. That structure has been vacant for roughly 20 years. A small brick shed sits south of the two main buildings. Under the redevelopment plan, the former Carver School will be renovated into a new community center, while continuing and expanding the site’s longstanding role as a neighborhood anchor.
The proposed Carver Community Center at Pleasant Grove is envisioned as a comprehensive hub for services and programs, including afterschool, track-out, and summer camp programs; job development services; space for nonprofit organizations to provide services; performing arts space within the retained auditorium; inclusive program areas suitable for multigenerational and multi-capable community members; universal design to ensure full Americans with Disabilities Act compliance; and space to continue onsite food security efforts…