Something remarkable has happened in the downtown area. State College has a new living room.
It took months longer than I anticipated. We had an incredible team of renovators shaping the heart and soul of the historic building. The build up to the opening was fabulous, and the finished product is exactly what I had in mind when we first started talking about the possibility of a place downtown.
We’re calling it CommonPlace, and much like your living room, it will be the home for coffee and conversation, for entertainment and culture, for laughter and lingering. It’s not an art gallery, though there will be installments of art that will take your breath away. It’s not a music house, though you’ll find people singing and creating some of the sweetest sounds. It’s not a coffee shop, though you’ll be able to sample some of the most delicious roasts Avodah has to offer. Steve Lutz describes CommonPlace as “a place where people will feel the welcome of God.”
Dana Ray has a dream for seeing the arts unleashed in that room. Ken Hull has a creative soul and has been dubbed the curator of CommonPlace. We’ve had a few sneak peeks, an official wander-in-after-church, and an open house replete with original music, dance, and prose, capped off by edible goodness created by Gourmet Girl Amanda Cruz.
I love this space. I love the people I’ve met, the responses from the folks walking by each day, the radical transformation that our build-team performed. I love the look on the faces of the downtown business owners when they stroll in. I love the creativity that flows in that space. I love the possibilities that this space brings.
But I think the thing that I love the most is the reaction from Joy, from the Nittany Quill. When a group of us were traipsing through her store to look at the basement, she asked what we were thinking of doing with the space. When I described what we thought we might do, she smiled and noted that our dream would be a redemptive act for that building.
Redemption. I love that.
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