History of Grace Center
Grace Center is located in the former Holland Elementary School, which was built in 1968. The school was closed in 2005 and sat vacant for nearly five years, until the Minneapolis School District opted to sell the school property in 2009. At that same time, three local churches had merged, pooled their resources, and sought a building for their new worship space.
The new congregation is now known as Grace Lutheran Church of Northeast Minneapolis. In early 2009, the new church formed a Facility Team to identify and recommend a suitable building to serve the members and mission of the church.
Read the Facility Team’s detailed report about this intensive process.
The Facility Team recommended the vacant Holland School building as the new home for the church.
In 2009, the church and the Minneapolis Area Synod of Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) formed a new nonprofit corporation — now known as Grace Center for Community Life — to purchase, own, and operate the Grace Center building.
Grace Center is a two-story structure of 60,000 square feet, located on 2.9 acres of land. By 2012, the Grace Center nonprofit organization completed a major project to repair and renovate the building. That project included updating the HVAC system and the commercial kitchen, as well as designing a gathering place for worship. The renovation provided worship space for the church and classrooms for schools (Spero Academy until 2018, and now New City School).
In addition, a significant landscaping project in 2015 removed blacktop over the entire south side of the building and installed three large rain gardens that infiltrate stormwater runoff and add green space. An inclusive playground, “Fair Play,” was completed in 2017 thanks to generous donations from the NE Minneapolis Lions Club, a Hennepin County Youth Sports grant, and community members. And in 2024, a 6,000-square-foot building-addition was completed to provide more classroom space for New City School.