In the conference room of the Junior League of Little Rock building, Lindsey Gray raises her voice to be heard over the sounds of hammering, shattering glass, and beeping machinery coming from the third floor. As Junior League president, Gray has grown accustomed to the sounds of construction since the organization broke ground in June on its newest project: transforming the third floor of its historic building into the Junior League of Little Rock Nonprofit Center, a shared workspace for up to seven nonprofit organizations. But rather than let the constant noise and chaos of construction slow her down, it’s the reason Gray keeps pushing forward.
“This was always the vision for this building,” Gray says. Built in 1910 by the Benevolent Order of the Elks Lodge 29, the building was purchased by the Woman’s City Club in 1927, and for the next 74 years, it was used as a clubhouse for meetings, luncheons and bridge games. When the Junior League purchased it in 2001, the building underwent a million dollar renovation on the first two floors. “The first and second floors were renovated to become a meeting space and a venue for events, then the second phase was a professional kitchen, which we have now. But we always knew we wanted to turn the top floor into something that facilitated other organizations growing here.”
For 13 years, the third floor was used only as storage, and sat mostly untouched since its days as part of the Woman’s City Club, when the small rooms were rented out to local artists. “Each room was an apartment, so you could see the personality of the artist that inhabited it,” Gray says. “Some walls were decoupaged, some had installation art, some had quotes painted on the wall. It stayed like that until we broke ground. One of the corner rooms that we used as storage had a spot where the ceiling was falling in, but we just worked around it because we knew the plan was in place to renovate it eventually.”
After a two-year capital campaign, construction began in June of 2014, just as Gray was moving into her role as president of the Junior League. “I knew what I was getting into,” she says, laughing. Becoming president of the 93-year-old organization is not something to be taken lightly, and the entire process, from initial interview to the start of her term, took two years. “We were working on the capital campaign for this project in the two years leading up to my presidency, and I knew I would come in when construction began and be here for the opening of the nonprofit center.”
This was perfectly all right for Gray, who recently purchased the Little Rock kitchen supply shop, Eggshells Kitchen Co., after a nine-year stint as chief financial officer in the construction industry. “Contracts, numbers, construction bids — all of that makes sense to me,” Gray says. “I feel like working on this project has been an extension of the knowledge I already had. Owning a business, though, is really similar to what I do in the Junior League. You have to be able to make tough decisions, you have to have leadership skills and know how to work with other people. You can’t be afraid to take the reins.”
A born-and-raised Little Rock native, Gray found herself wanting to give back to the community after college and joined the Junior League in the hopes of growing her friend base and getting plugged in to the city’s happenings, and she knew from the beginning that she wanted to move into a leadership position. “Anytime I join a committee, I want to be chair of it or move up into a leadership capacity,” she says. “If I’m going to become involved with a cause, I want to do the most work I can do for that cause. And that’s what led me here.” Now in her fourth year on the Junior League’s board of directors, Gray has been a part of every phase of the nonprofit center project. She served on the construction committee leading up to the groundbreaking, helped in the planning phase, and served on the capital campaign committee. As president, she acts as a sort of consultant to the conversation, adding her voice and expertise where needed.
Soon, all of Gray’s and the Junior League’s hard work and years of planning will come to fruition with the opening of the Nonprofit Center. Applications were due at the end of 2014, and this month, the Junior League’s nonprofit advisory council faces the harrowing task of choosing the seven small or start-up nonprofits that will inhabit the space.
The 3,431-SF third floor has been cleared out and cleaned up, and the seven former apartments will serve as offices for nonprofit organizations, each with one to two employees. Guests step off the elevator and into a shared welcome center, which will contain couches and comfortable chairs, so that tenants can meet with donors or guests under a large, airy skylight. Other shared spaces include a kitchen, bathroom, and a workroom that houses copy and postage machines. The largest corner room will serve as a shared boardroom, with AV equipment for presentations and space to hold board luncheons.
“Our goal is to nurture these nonprofits through the collaboration of a shared space,” Gray says. “Working together, they’ll be able to bounce ideas off each other and learn from one another. We’ll have a resource library with all sorts of documentation on things like how to create a strategic plan, or how to build a board of directors. There are things like that that a lot of people coming into the nonprofit world don’t know how to do.” Gray says that in addition to collaboration and efficiency through cost savings, the nonprofits will also have access to the same training programs available to Junior League members, which teach nonprofit-based knowledge and leadership skills.
The renovation also marks a milestone for the Junior League — the completed restoration of the Woman’s City Club. “With this project, we will have completely restored this building and brought it back to life,” Gray says, “which is just another way the Junior League has helped to preserve this little piece of Little Rock’s history.”
Now in its 93rd year of service, the Junior League of Little Rock has garnered a reputation for starting many community projects that would eventually go on to become their own entities — things like Riverfest, the Arkansas Arts Center and Potluck Food Rescue, to name a few. Gray hopes the Junior League Nonprofit Center will be next. “This is the ultimate living out of our mission,” Gray says, “which is to train community leaders and empower women. That’s exactly what we’re doing in this space, but on a bigger scale. It’s no longer just our members that we’re training. We’re going outside of the Junior League walls.” Gray laughs at her own words. “Well, metaphorically speaking — we’re going outside of our membership walls, while still managing to stay right here in our own building.”
