Former Greene County Career Center undergoing make-over in hopes of helping area residents in need

Emerge Recovery & Trade Initiative:  Rebuilding Lives – Restoring Hope!

XENIA — Although its halls seem quiet and vacant now, the former Greene County Career Center located in Xenia Township is about to undergo a massive transformation in the coming months, bringing with it new life and an entirely new purpose for the property.

That purpose is expected to be a very positive one for the community. In fact, the three local business owners who purchased the 2960 W. Enon Road complex are formalizing plans they’ve announced to transform it into a multi-functional trade school and recovery center this fall, with a business incubator and temporary housing available to those in need and much more.

The property’s new owners are Kip Morris, CEO and part owner of Five Star Heating and Cooling Group, Chris Adams who owns Narrow Path Plumbing and Doug Van Dyke, owner of Van Martin Roofing. All three of these men have strong ties to the Miami Valley area recovery communities and have spent years building their companies with the help of people who have demonstrated positive changes in the direction of their lives.

The group’s newly-formed non-profit organization, the Emerge Recovery & Trades Initiative, will handle all the day-to-day operations of the property, which is 48-acres in size and includes several buildings, a large outdoor campus area and a four-acre scenic freshwater pond in rural Greene County — centrally located near Fairborn, Xenia, Yellow Springs and Beavercreek.

The group is currently seeking qualified candidates to hire an executive director to run the non-profit and the entire operation and also looking for other area businesses that could benefit from joining their efforts to transform lives. In addition to the trade school, there will be a wide-range of programs aimed at helping men and women in recovery in addition to vulnerable youth who are at-risk and young adults leaving foster care.

“We are hoping to be in the place in May, or no later than the first week of June,” said Kip Morris, speaking on behalf of the group, which purchased the place for $1.6 million at public auction in early March. The property contains around 243,400 square feet of indoor space. “We are all in long-term recovery ourselves, and have a heart for helping people coming out of that lifestyle. Because we’ve all been blessed in our businesses and had success helping people in need, we decided to try to do this on a much larger scale, to help as many people as possible.”

In addition to schooling in plumbing, roofing and HVAC work, with real-world work experience in those respective fields, the property will have a men’s recovery center and a women’s recovery center that will include separate temporary housing.

His Hope Adult & Teen Challenge will run the men’s program. It is a faith-based men’s recovery housing recovery program operated by Rusty Toadvine.

Cynthia Stemple and Melissa Adams will be in charge of the women’s program, which is a new program called Hope Hub.

The Hope Hub looks to provide additional educational opportunities for people in recovery, helping women develop and maintain healthy behavior patterns, learning self-care, financial literacy, and more. They also want to focus on making their program a “safe grace space” where women can always come back to find help and grace.

Area businesses interested in joining the endeavor will be offered low-cost rent, discounted business services, and paid and unpaid internships performed by the people completing the on-site recovery and foster care emancipation programs, in addition to a wide range of business development and growth tools that will help new or pre-existing entrepreneurs expand their business or non-profit and function at a higher level while at the same time helping people in need.

“How all this came to be — we have to give all the credit to God,” Mr. Morris said. “Without God’s help, none of this would be possible. . . Although we are taking a financial risk, we decided it would be worth it. There is a high potential that we could end up helping a lot of people out.”

Greene County school officials said they were very pleased to see that the property would be used in this way. Per Ohio law, it was offered to other area public and private schools before being put up for public auction.

Area students officially began taking classes at Former Greene County Career Center undergoing make-over in hopes of helping area residents in need.