Guadalupe Centers transforming former seminary site

Jean-Paul Chaurand chuckles as he remembers being fraught with worry earlier this year, shortly after the Guadalupe Centers acquired a sprawling 10-building, 19-acre campus that previously housed a decades-old seminary.

“There were nights I woke up in cold sweats thinking, ‘Man, that is a lot of property that we have got to take care of,’” said Chaurand, the agency’s chief operating officer. “But I was confident that we had the capacity and ability to renovate and program the space for the community needs.”

Its recent acquisition of the former Saint Paul School of Theology at Truman Road and Van Brunt Boulevard enables Guadalupe Centers, a longtime fixture on the West Side, to expand its operations to the Northeast area and other portions of east Kansas City.

The new campus, called Villa Guadalupe, is expected to serve, among others, the area’s growing Hispanic population, mostly immigrant families who have arrived in recent years.

The former seminary rests atop a hill that provides a scenic view of the surrounding neighborhoods and downtown Kansas City. Red-brick buildings accented with white trim dot a campus that includes winding sidewalks, grassy commons areas and rolling hills. A bell tower with a white steeple stands at the campus entrance. It still chimes every hour.

“We operate many critical programs, and we want to give quality space to those programs, something more than have them inside some hand-me-down buildings that only a nonprofit could get,” Chaurand said.

The Guadalupe Centers has provided social services, job training, counseling, financial literacy and emergency assistance for West Side residents for decades. Those operations have grown to the point that the agency now serves more than 7,000 families of different racial and ethnic groups each year.

Currently, the agency operates 10 locations in the city’s urban core, midtown and Belton. That includes three charter schools, a preschool and a credit union.

At the former seminary, students in kindergarten through the second grade occupy classrooms inside a building that once housed a dining hall, the student union and the campus bookstore. One classroom, with its large windows and glass doors, lets out onto a terrace that offers a view of the downtown skyline.

Some of the agency’s family support workers, a credit union, financial services, a culinary school and its charter school administrative offices are housed in a three-story building across the street from the main campus.

The agency plans to make over various buildings on the campus. The work includes refurbishing one building to make way for a community center; transforming two dormitories into senior housing; renovating the chapel basement into a preschool; and expanding its elementary school operations in another building.

The former owners like the transformation.

“We are so pleased with the work that the Guadalupe Centers are doing in and around the city. They are reaching out to the community in new and exciting ways and are continuing to be a blessing and have a positive impact in the community,” said David B. Sisney, vice president for advancement for the seminary, which moved to an Overland Park office building near Interstate 435 and Roe Avenue in July.

Guadalupe Centers began trying to acquire property in the Northeast area about a decade ago. Agency leaders tried but failed to purchase a building that once housed the Minute Circle Friendly House at 25th Street and Elmwood Avenue. Instead, it became the J. & D. Wagner Unit of the Boys and Girls Club.

“Even back then, we saw the trend, the demographic shift that was happening in our city when it came to the growth of the Latino community,” Chaurand said.

Before moving to Johnson County, the Saint Paul seminary had been an anchor for that part of the city, especially along Truman Road and the adjacent area, Kansas City Councilman Scott Wagner said.

City leaders hoped whoever took over would continue that reputation and not “drag (down) the rest of the area if there was not a good use for the campus,” Wagner said.

Guadalupe obtained financing through the Raza Development Fund. It took ownership of the Saint Paul property in February and held a summer school there that served 120 students, said Guadalupe Centers CEO Cris Medina.

Roughly 750 students are enrolled in Guadalupe Centers’ charter school system. The additional space at the Saint Paul campus eventually will allow the overall student population to stretch to nearly 1,200 students, Medina said.

A five-story building on campus that once served as faculty and administrative offices will be converted for elementary students in grades third through fifth. Work on that building is to begin this month and be completed in July.

The lower level of the campus chapel will become the center’s second preschool site and is expected to serve as many as 55 students. Planning for the construction began in September. Officials are raising funds for the renovation, which they hope to have done by the end of next summer.

Another building will be renovated to add a conference center for community and civic groups to meet and conduct workshops and training seminars. It also will have classrooms for adult education, after-school and summer school programs. Construction is to be completed next summer.

Next year, the center will apply for low-income housing tax credits from Missouri to finance converting two campus dormitories into independent housing units for low- to moderate-income seniors.

Two groups — East 23rd Street PAC and the Blue Valley Neighborhood Association — soon will locate their offices on the campus.

The significant investment in the area is expected to help stem decades of blight that has hampered the area, Wagner said.

“What Guadalupe Center is going to do will really end up having a far greater ripple effect around the area,” he said. “And that is exciting.”

This story was originally published January 3, 2015 at 1:11 PM.