Life Remodeled opens Anchor Detroit, a nearly 72,000-square-foot opportunity hub on the east side

The building at 9740 McKinney St. has worn more than one name. Dominican High School was a private, all-girls Catholic school, founded in 1940 by the Adrian Dominican Sisters of the Congregation of the Most Holy Rosary.

Now it has another life. Life Remodeled gave the first public preview of Anchor Detroit inside it last week, opening what the nonprofit calls its second opportunity hub, as first reported by [dBusiness](https://www.dbusiness.com/daily-news/life-remodeled-opens-anchor-detroit-opportunity-hub-on-citys-east-side/).

The nearly 72,000-square-foot hub sits near I-94 and Whittier Avenue, with close to 60,000 square feet that Life Remodeled nonprofit partners can lease. Life Remodeled acquired the 7.55-acre site in Denby, the neighborhood on Detroit's east side that surrounds it, to serve the community there.

The need there runs deep. Roughly 73 percent of Denby's children live below the federal poverty line, a childhood poverty rate higher than 98.8 percent of neighborhoods across the country. That is the ground Anchor Detroit is built to serve.

The hub is starting to connect residents to workforce development, afterschool youth services, and health and wellness support, according to dBusiness. Life Remodeled says it is built to serve 18,000 Detroiters a year, adding tech and arts and culture programming to that mix.

Life Remodeled's first opportunity hub, the Durfee Innovation Society, shows what that can look like at scale. That building stays fully occupied, with 36 tenant organizations serving 28,000 Detroiters a year. Life Remodeled says the Durfee hub has produced more than 850 job placements and over $16 million in new wages for Detroiters, according to dBusiness.

Life Remodeled treats Anchor Detroit as one piece of what it calls its E3M model, short for economic, educational, and environmental mobility, according to dBusiness. Amazon's cumulative investment in Life Remodeled will reach $500,000, and the State of Michigan has given $2 million, according to dBusiness.

Diallo Smith, the nonprofit's CEO, framed the preview as proof the approach can travel. "After three years of community-driven momentum, we're proving that our model for sustainable neighborhood revitalization can extend to other parts of the city," he told dBusiness.

The building keeps finding new purpose, and its latest chapter points straight back at the blocks around it.