J Magazine Winter 2019

are nonprofits. We have 635 apartments for the elderly, we have a nursing
home, a school, a medical clinic. The Sulzbacher Center was built
by one of our members. So all of these are wonderful things, but none
of them pay any taxes.
So, when I came a decade ago, Ginny and I started having breakfast
and then we started praying with a group of people and the first
thing we realized was, we think God is calling people to move back in
with the poor. You know we’ve been ministering to the people who
were left Downtown basically, but we need people living with them
and among them. That’s what’s going to make a real change and
transformation.
Ginny: The dean came to me and said, I’d like to figure out what to
do about the neighborhood all around the Cathedral. One of her best
lines was, “I know we have to do something but I’m not sure exactly
what it is. They don’t teach you this in priest school.”
So what she did was find people who knew how to do this. It’s a
triad between the government, a local investor and a nonprofit and
others, in order to put that capital stock together. We brought in the
Urban Land Institute, which gave us the roadmap and we have been
following that roadmap since the beginning.
Dean Kate: One of the nonprofits we birthed is Aging True, which
owns the high-rises, and they’re planning on building another building
with more residential, Ashley Square. It’s important to note that we are
committed to affordable housing, but we’re also doing market rate,
because I really do want to create a diversity of income strata in the
neighborhood.
I know you there was talk earlier about bringing a school to the
Cathedral District. How’s that coming?
Ginny: Well, we’re back to square one. The charter school company
that we were working with has elected not to move forward
with another campus. They had
applied to the School Board to
open two new schools, one of
them was ours. But it was rejected.
So, I’m back looking for another
charter school, and I’ve had
two interviews so far with people
who have heard we’re looking.
We’ve identified three sites. Our
goal is to do a K-8 school. There’s a lot of potential there.
DEAN KATE
MOOREHEAD
WORK: Dean of St. John’s
Episcopal Cathedral
FROM: New Haven, Conn.
LIVES IN: Avondale
Dean Kate: We did a study with UNF that determined that there
are many people who would want to send their children to school near
their workplace here in the urban core. There’s a lot of demand.
BOB SELF
Who do you see as being interested in living in the Cathedral District?
Ginny: This particular neighborhood, the Cathedral District
neighborhood, has historically and will in the future be the affordable
neighborhood. We are never going to be the high price point on the
river, such as what you have on the Southbank, or in the Northbank
with the Berkman and hopefully others. But what is about to burst
open is what Shad Khan is going to do along the waterfront, which will
require literally thousands of employees who are not capable of living
in a high-end apartment or a high-end condo. They will be walking
distance, within three blocks of the Cathedral District. So they are the
target market. Right now, there are about 800 people in the Cathedral
District, including the senior high-rises, and I think that number could
be a couple of thousand.
WINTER 2019 | J MAGAZINE 93