The Gainesville Housing Authority’s (GHA) new ELITE Force Training Center is meant to help families push their way “up and out” of affordable housing, boosting them into careers that could help them eventually purchase their own homes. 

The center, whose name stands for Empowerment, Life skills, Innovation, Training and Entrepreneurship, is representative of transformation, according to officials who gathered for the training center’s ribbon cutting on Wednesday morning. 

The building itself, at 2626 E. University Ave., used to be a daycare center but sat for about 15 years as a sort of maintenance and storage facility. About three years ago, GHA CEO Pamela Davis set staff on track to turn it into a jobs training center, and officials broke ground last summer. 

“Not only is it a transformation of the brick-and-mortar building, but it’s the start of a transformation of the community,” Malcolm Kiner, GHA’s Chief Operating Officer, said in a speech. 

The jobs training center was part of Davis’s vision to create an opportunity for low-income people to learn skills that could increase their income. 

“We’re not going to build our way out of this affordable housing issue we have in our communities,” Davis said in a speech. “So we have to make sure that there are ways for people to move in, move up, and move out.” 

To recognize Davis’s driving force behind the project, GHA’s board of commissioners dedicated the building to her and her vision. 

“We are present here today in your [Davis’s] latest opportunity… a space that uplifts not only individuals… but our residents as well, which will lead to uplifting families and also communities,” said LaShanda Lovette, GHA’s chief compliance officer, who presented the dedication. 

The ELITE Force Training Center includes partnerships with Santa Fe College and The University of Florida Training, Research and Education for Environmental Occupations (UF TREEO), as well as others who will teach skills to both East Gainesville residents and others. GHA is still open to and looking for more community business partners to teach at the center. 

The center is set to provide business development programs and opportunities to learn construction, backflow prevention, health services, accounting and other job skills. The center will serve both GHA residents and the broader Gainesville community. 

GHA has linked the project to the Choice Neighborhood initiative, for which the city of Gainesville and GHA received a $500,000 planning grant in 2023. With that grant, GHA has been gathering community input on improving East Gainesville neighborhoods. 

The grant includes $150,000 for an Early Action Project and could result in an implementation grant of up to $40 million for the implementation of a plan, according to Kiner. 

If that implementation grant is provided, Kiner said GHA would redevelop the Pine Meadows and Lake Terrace neighborhoods, both around the ELITE center, replacing 180 units. The redeveloped neighborhoods would be intended as mixed-income communities, with some low-income housing, some affordable housing and some market-rate housing for rent and to own. 

“It is an amazing building standing here before you, because of perseverance,” GHA board chair Angela Tharpe said in a speech. “Because when we started this, [Davis] had a vision that she wanted to make sure that every person that was in one of our apartments, as well as those that are in this community, not only have us as support, but they have a place to go to get the skills that are needed to make sure that they not only have a place to live for this moment in time, but they have the ability to create a different quality of life for themselves.”