Meet our Community Award Honorees

We're excited to recognize two honorees at our 2024 Annual Breakfast & Community Awards: 

• Exemplary Project: The Abbey on Monroe
• Exemplary Partner: Wells Fargo

You can read more about why each is so deserving in the spotlight stories below. Attendees at the event on November 13 will get to tour The Abbey on Monroe as well as hear from our keynote speaker, Dr. Stefano Bloch. Last year's event sold out! Get your tickets by Friday, October 25 to guarantee your seat. 

EXEMPLARY PROJECT: The Abbey on Monroe

Interior for the Monroe Abbey March 2020.

A piece of architectural history has a purposeful future in downtown Phoenix

Fifty-five years after the First Baptist Church closed its doors in downtown Phoenix and nearly 40 years after a massive fire left it in ruins, the historic landmark is entering a second life as a much-needed third place.

As redevelopment sagas go, the evolution of the church now known as Monroe Street Abbey is one for the ages. Perseverance, stewardship, community development know-how, partnerships and impact investing are why this fascinating story of historic preservation and community building isn’t a tragic one. 

Terry Goddard had just begun his first term as mayor of Phoenix in 1984 when a fire caused the church’s roof to collapse. He credits firefighters for working hard to prevent a total loss. The church’s four walls still stand.  

“It’s a really beautiful building, even as a ruin,” Goddard said. “It has a sense about it that people are really attracted by.”

In 1992, the city declared the structure, which has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1982, a hazard and scheduled it for demolition. The Housing Opportunity Center, a nonprofit that Goddard helped establish, bought the property at Monroe Street and Third Avenue n 1993 with the intent to convert it to affordable housing. 

But all the modifications and upgrades to make the structure, which was built in 1929 and expanded in 1950, suitable for housing would have destroyed the abbey, Goddard said. Instead, HOC built 95 apartment units in the former church parking lot.

When Monroe Street Abbey Apartments was nearly finished in 1995, Goddard described for an Arizona Republic reporter the challenges the nonprofit navigated to build the affordable housing units. “We applied four times with the Federal Home Loan Bank,” he is quoted as saying. “I mean this was the little engine that could. On the fourth try, we made it. It’s an epic tale of persistence.”

Twenty-eight years later, the abbey redevelopment project, put in motion by a $6.6 million loan that closed in early October, 2023, is now a next-level tale. 

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EXEMPLARY PARTNER: Wells Fargo

Wells Fargo’s partnership with LISC Phoenix helps build a more inclusive economic future

Is it nature or nurture?

It’s not a question you’d expect to explore when trying to get to the heart of what makes the long, deep relationship between Wells Fargo and LISC Phoenix so special. But when you see what partnership does to help individuals and neighborhoods, when you know the legacy of the leaders guiding the community development work, the answer to the nature/nurture question is not surprising. 

It’s both. 

For more than three decades at the national and local levels, Wells Fargo has partnered with LISC on an imperative to help neighborhoods that have been neglected, abandoned or otherwise denied access to opportunity. That shared mission has activated programs like Financial Opportunity Centers, which offer clients a range of services to achieve financial health, and the Open for Business Fund, which provides capital, technical support, and develop long-term resiliency programs for vulnerable small businesses. The extraordinary working relationship fortifies households and boosts small business development that help establish long-overdue foundations generational wealth. 

We are thrilled to honor Wells Fargo as the LISC Phoenix 2024 exemplary partner for its long history of providing leadership and critical financial and technical support in building inclusive community and economic development systems. 

The LISC Phoenix-Wells Fargo relationship is the natural result of a nonprofit and funder combining forces to achieve shared community-based goals. But the partnership to fortify the community development infrastructure in metro Phoenix also has been nurtured in ways that inform the work of LISC Phoenix and Wells Fargo as individual organizations.

Wells Fargo’s partnership with LISC Phoenix is part of the body and soul of the community development financial institution. Since the earliest years of LISC Phoenix, Wells Fargo has had a representative on the Local Advisory Committee, which puts several sectors at the table of community development discussions, provides guidance and support to the local program’s leadership and advocates for LISC Phoenix in the community. Currently, there are two Wells Fargo representatives on the LAC: Katie Campana, vice president, Lead Community Impact and Sustainability Specialist, and Lisa Price, vice president, Lead Financial Health Philanthropy. 

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