NEW ORLEANS — A 1930s corner grocery that sat vacant for more than 20 years has been restored and converted into Shiloh Gardens Academy Holy Cross, an early childhood education center for 50 children located in the Holy Cross neighborhood of the Lower Ninth Ward. On August 20, workshopWDXL held a ribbon cutting for the new preschool at 533 St. Maurice Avenue to celebrate the return of a longtime neighborhood landmark to community use. Members of the project team, community leaders, and neighborhood residents attended the celebration.
Shiloh Gardens Academy Opens in Lower Ninth Ward
Pamela Marshall, owner of Shiloh Gardens Academy, has spent two decades running early childhood education centers in New Orleans. Her new location will operate in tandem with an existing preschool located in Central City. Like the original Shiloh Gardens Academy, the new preschool will offer a majority of subsidized seats accessible to families in the neighborhood. For Marshall, it’s the answer to a need local families have long faced.
“I’m hoping that it can help to revitalize that community. The Lower Ninth Ward was hit pretty hard during Katrina, and it’s been slow to redevelop.”
Many families, she noted, have had to drive over the Industrial Canal Bridge for child care. Going forward, parents will be able to drop off and pick up their children at Shiloh Gardens Academy close to home.
The restored building was formerly a neighborhood grocery store run for decades by the Masca family. It was purchased in 2017 by local attorney Blake Jones, who owns several adjacent properties as well as the former site of the St. Maurice Catholic Church on the neighboring block. workshopWDXL was initially hired to oversee stabilization work on the foundation and installation of a new roof. In 2020, Jones and workshopWDXL partnered to redevelop the historic structure together.
“It’s been the realization of a dream for me for a long time to give back to the Holy Cross in the lowest part of the Lower Ninth Ward,” Jones said. “I’ve been involved with this neighborhood since I purchased the St. Maurice Church site 13 years ago. It’s a treasure that we must preserve for future generations of New Orleanians.”
Carimi Construction was the general contractor. workshopWDXL served as both developer and architect for the renovation. The financing package included a construction loan from Investar Bank, state and federal historic tax credits, and a grant from the Early Childhood Education (ECE) Facilities Grant Program, jointly administered by Agenda for Children and the New Orleans Redevelopment Authority.
Claire Thomas, who manages the ECE Fund at the New Orleans Redevelopment Authority, pointed to what made the project stand out. “We loved the idea of a building that had not been in commerce for an extended period being brought back to support the local community,” she said. “On a project this size, it’s incredibly helpful to have a development team that can pull together the different funding sources and put together a capital stack that makes a project like this work.”
David Gindin, director of development at workshopWDXL, is excited to see the impact of this renovation on the neighborhood fabric. “This corner meant something to the neighborhood long before we arrived. Our goal was never just to save a building, but to give it a purpose the community needs today” he said. “As both the developers and the architects, we were able to see this through from the first conversation to the first day of school.”
Great care was taken to preserve the building’s historic character while meeting the requirements of a modern childcare facility. Original windows and doors were salvaged, and a historic awning removed by a previous owner was added back.
About workshopWDXL
Founded in 2019, workshopWDXL is a New Orleans based real estate development, architecture, and design team. The firm originates and carries complex adaptive reuse projects from first concept through financing, design, construction, and completion.
