CREATING A HOME FOR THE LATINO COMMUNITY

Read on to hear more about our big plans!

WHY

Nuestra Casa?

East Tennessee’s Latino population is growing, and with it, the demand for our services. Now Centro is bursting at the seams!

The last few years have required daily musical chairs as we navigate a lack of quiet and/or confidential places to engage with clients or hold meetings. Our limited space has also required that classes, graduations, social events, trainings, and presentations be held offsite. In 2024, we have thousands of clients receiving tens of thousands of programmatic hours, hundreds of volunteers, 46 staff members, and nowhere to put them all!

This has been an immense logistical challenge, but the most difficult part of a home that’s far too small is not communing with our clients on a daily basis. While Centro is still the heart of the Latino community in Knoxville, our current location prevents it from serving as the gathering place it once was. Centro leadership has been working diligently to find an ideal solution, and after years of exploring our options and weighing the pros and cons, we have decided to move our operations to the 3rd floor of the Central United Methodist Church!

WHY

Central United Methodist Church?

LOCATION

The Central United Methodist Church was originally built to serve as a community center. In recent years, their leadership was looking for ways to be more involved in the community, and Centro leadership was looking for a place to call home. A match was made!

By inviting Centro to join them in the Fourth and Gill Historic District, the Central United Methodist congregation is helping us to situate our operations near the center of Knoxville and directly on the bus route. Most importantly, we will be reunited with our community as we continue the holistic work of the last 19 years.

COMMUNITY

We are thrilled to bring more life to a site that has long served Knoxville and to be reuniting with our community for potlucks, graduations, health fairs, workshops, children’s programming, and so much more!

CONNECTION

In this space, we will continue supporting parents as they engage with Knox County Schools, guiding youth along the path to college, teaching families how to buy their first homes, offering referrals for a range of healthcare services, and connecting people to local industries. With the help of hundreds of volunteers, we also provide mentorship on finances, wellness, entrepreneurship, parenting, mental health, and teach five levels of English classes to nearly 500 hundred students per year

At Centro Hispano, we are cultivating the next generation of skilled bilingual and multicultural college graduates, entrepreneurs, and employees, and inviting Latinos to envision themselves as central to the life and growth of the region.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Find answers to some of our most frequently asked questions below. If you don’t find your answer, please contact Claudia Caballero at claudia@centrohispanotn.org so we can help!

Why do we need a building campaign?

For eight years after Centro’s founding, volunteers worked out of garages and church basements, and word slowly began to spread that the Latino community had a place here. In our building at John Tarleton Park, we’ve brought our favorite dishes to Christmas potlucks and trained our very first group of medical interpreters, celebrated baby showers and graduations, tackled big questions in focus groups and tended to those in need, watched our afterschool kids blossom and said goodbye to our college-bound youth. As Centro grew into the leading Latino-serving organization in East Tennessee, the pulse of East Tennessee’s Latino community has grown strong and steady. Now we need a space that can support the work of 45+ employees and our hundreds of volunteers!

How long have we felt this need?

Let’s just say we’re way overdue to have the Fire Marshall over for a cafecito. Our current building has 25 people stuffed into six offices and hasn’t been able to house our classes for more than three years!

What work has already gone into planning for this project?

Centro leadership has been in negotiations about this building for over a year, though the journey to find Centro a new home began more nearly four years ago! We first met members of the Central United Methodist Church congregation through a visiting Chilean architect. As it turned out, Centro was looking for a larger space at the same time the church was looking to enhance its community outreach and involvement. A match was made! We brought in Barbra McMurry Architects and The Christmas Company but ultimately found that the initial plans were too expensive. We went back to the drawing board, reimagined the space on a tighter budget, brought in another firm to flesh out a pared down plan we could all feel good about, and got to work!

Will the renovation give us more space?

So much more! We will be going from 2500 ft. to a 7500 sq. ft space.

While we are proud of the resiliency Centro staff has shown, the new building will give us the space to accommodate us all, host our programming onsite, and bring the community back together in one centralized location.

How much will the total renovations cost?

We have been through many rounds of drawings with architects and contractors with the express purpose of keeping our total costs at around $500,000. Current estimates have us renovating and outfitting our new home for $525,000 in total. Any money we raise beyond that amount will go directly back into building a more diverse, more resilient community in the heart of Knoxville.

That’s a lot of money. How does Centro plan to get it?

We need to raise as much of the project costs as possible. The more money we raise, the less we will have to borrow, and the better our financial position will be as we move into our next phase.

Currently, we have secured $100,000 from the county, and $85,000 from the city, the remaining $340,000 will be solicited from private donors after our lease is signed on July 1st.

What’s the timeline?

Renovations are underway! We are hoping to move in by Fall break in October!

How will the construction impact Centro's work?

Short answer, it won’t! While construction is underway, we will continue serving as the area’s experts on all things related to the Latino community. We have already secured alternate housing for our programming, and will be making it work until it’s time to transition into the new space.

Will the church be closing?

No, this is a partnership! We will be located on the 3rd floor!

As Latinos, many of us form a part of humanity’s age-old story of migration, of immigration—seeking a home outside of where we started. As people, our identity is very much tied to where we feel we belong.