It takes a village to build a community center.  

Titusville’s Cultural Center is expanding thanks to a partnership between Opportunity Alabama (OPAL) and Common Thread. The Community Foundation of Greater Birmingham is proud to be a part of this collaboration as part of its first ever Impact Investing – providing OPAL a low-interest loan for the project. Support has also been provided by other groups, including the Birmingham City Council.  

The Cultural Center is a six-acre campus owned by Common Thread that provides space for mission-driven entrepreneurs, non-profits, and small businesses as well as workforce training and enrichment for young people. The center’s first building is already home to two impactful programs: BuildUP, a secondary vocational school focused on construction, and A4One, a state-of-the-art community fitness and athletics center for adults and youth. 

Now a second building for the campus is in the works. The new building will feature affordable coworking space, a community event space for meetings and parties, and eventually a commissary teaching kitchen for entrepreneurs in the restaurant industry. An auto repair program called TuneUP, a workforce development program for young people interested in automative mechanics, has already opened up shop in the space. And ToolBank USA, a community tool library that provides construction tools and expertise to non-profits and residents, will be opening soon.  

The Cultural Center’s expansion builds on ongoing community revitalization efforts in historic Titusville, a neighborhood west of UAB and downtown. Strategic nonprofit collaboration, support from UAB and the City of Birmingham, and a dedicated funding partner in Navigate Affordable Housing are all driving momentum for Titusville’s growth and renewal.  

Opportunity Alabama 

The Community Foundation offered a low-interest loan at 2.5% to OPAL. With that financing OPAL was able to help Common Thread secure additional funds needed to make the dream of an expanded Titusville Cultural Center a reality.  

“We are the intercessor between folks that are doing really good work in the community and the traditional models of capital,” said Opportunity Alabama founder and CEO Alex Flachsbart.  

But OPAL does much more than loan out money. Opportunity Alabama is an economic development organization that helps communities leverage public and private funding to create physical spaces and places that can transform local communities. Founded in 2018, OPAL has been featured in Forbes Magazine and The New York Times for its work and has facilitated more than $1billion in new investment and secured $7.5 million in national grant funding. 

Flachsbart explained that OPAL helps to professionalize community development projects. 

“You’ve got to have a professionalized infrastructure,” he said. “You’ve got to have a good website. You’ve got to have a community advisory board that is the folks from the community to ensure that all the programming that’s happening at this campus actually is reflective of community.” 

Through its property development assistance program, OPAL helps groups like Common Thread every step of the way through the development process, said Chief Development Officer Becky Carpenter.  

“I can come alongside a property owner who is undertaking a development project of some kind and who needs a little extra capacity, needs some help along the way,” she explained. “We do things like building budgets, financial models, development plans. We help with due diligence of the pre-development steps in order to assess the viability of a project and then get it to a point where it is financeable.” 

Using materials such as financial models that OPAL helps a property developer produce, the property owner can then go to a bank to secure a loan. OPAL can also help property developers find relevant tax advantage programs. 

“We also, as an organization, can make loans or investments in some of these projects, if the underwriting bears out that it’s a good fit for some of our different vehicles that we offer,” Carpenter said.  

And OPAL was able to do just that thanks to the loan it received from the Community Foundation. 

“If there’s still a gap, we can help fill it,” Flachsbart said. “There was still a gap on this project, which is why I went to the Community Foundation. The Community Foundation putting dollars with us solidifies our reputation and lets me go to the Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFI) Fund and say, ‘Look, I’ve got trust and additional stakeholders.’” 

OPAL’s assistance doesn’t stop there. They advise on the construction process and even help with tenant attraction strategies.  

“We’re able to comprehensively take what would otherwise be a project that would be extraordinarily difficult to finance, and we’re able to help all the way through construction and figuring out all the logistical steps needed to get it to a point where a bank is willing to put capital to work in Titusville on a nonprofit project because it is legitimate enough,” Flachsbart said.  

Common Thread 

Just as the Community Foundation trusted Opportunity Alabama, OPAL had good reason to trust Common Thread, the organization that owns Titusville’s Cultural Center. 

Not only did the Cultural Center already have the established tenants of BuildUP and A4One, but Common Thread has a proven track record elsewhere.  

Common Thread is the group behind The Hub Coworking center in West Homewood and has supported several mission-driven small businesses including Seeds Coffee, SaChai Tea, Taproot Landscaping, and many more.  

Under the leadership of executive director Nick Crawford, Common Thread seeks to create places that provide nonprofits and mission-driven small business owners space to grow while also uplifting historically underserved neighborhoods.  

The goal is to develop community hubs that support entrepreneurship, education, workforce development, and wellness.  

Community First 

In the midst of all the paperwork and preparation that comes with securing funding for an undertaking as big as Titusville’s Cultural Center campus, the community that the center is for must not be overlooked.  

“It’s important when you come into a community that you’re not doing something for the community or to the community, but you’re doing it with the community,” Carpenter said. 

That’s why the Cultural Center’s Community Advisory Board – which includes residents and local officials such as Birmingham City Councilor Crystal Smitherman – has been an integral part of the process. 

“That group has been involved in a lot of the visioning for what the second building was going to be, what kind of services they wanted to have for the neighborhood, what that tenant base could or should be in order to provide those services,” Carpenter said.  

Once the second building is complete the work will continue. There are plans to reorient the entrances of the center to make it more welcoming and plans to add green space.  

“We’re really looking forward to having the community out to this building and having the Titusville neighborhood embrace it and use it and see it as their own,” Carpenter said. 

Learn more about the Titusville Cultural Center at CommonThread.org.