Posterity Heights’ Scholar House is Almost There
Grand Opening in September 2018 for the Mixed Housing Community
Prophet Cedric Walker of Joshua Temple just met with an individual who sent him reeling. A couple of weeks ago, Walker pursued and did not receive some new market tax credits for Posterity Heights, the new mixed housing community being constructed on McKinnie Street.
“He said, ‘I’m glad to know you because when you die, so many people are going to be touched by what you’re doing.’ I hadn’t really thought about it from that perspective,” Walker said.
“I was thinking 20 years down the line. I was thinking about the children of the first class that will go through the Scholar House. What would their life be like 20 years from now, if we provided for them and their parents.”
Legacy goes hand-to-hand with Posterity Heights. It’s in the name and under the logo. (The phrase ‘Creating Legacies’ rests right under it.) But Prophet Walker was confronted with his own legacy and what his idea, birthed in 2012 while driving on McKinnie and seeing those empty acres of land, will bring forth.
On the eve of realizing a dream, one can stare into the future and blink. Prophet Walker’s eyes are wide open. “It’s humbling, but it’s exciting.”
The fervor re-builds every time he gives a tour. The lost tax credits are no longer of value.
The Phase 1 Scholar House is like an all-inclusive college campus, designed for lower income families (particularly single parents) who want access to higher education. Residents can take entry-level, general education classes through area colleges, Posterity Heights’ academic partners (Purdue Fort Wayne, Ivy Tech, Indiana Tech, Indiana Wesleyan, and USF), as a gateway for traditional enrollment.Summit Coaching, another partner, will provide on-site life coaching “to help people find their shape, to help scholars and children find how God [shaped] you,” Walker said. “What are your gifts?”
Brightpoint will be handling Posterity’s Scholar House Early Childhood Development until the onsite Childcare Development Center is completed. Safeway Foods will bring a fresh food market to the campus. There’s going to be a Housing Life Development Innovation Resource Center (HLDIRC), and an entrepreneur spacer and meeting rooms.
44 apartments, dedicated for the Scholar House, will be rentable in September, but 120 mixed housing units (townhomes, lease to own, and three and four bedroom single family homes at market rate) will be available; the rest of the apartments will be up for grabs for anyone wanting to live there, not just single mothers, not just families.
“The model now is for mixed communities people who can live work play and educate all in the same spot,” Prophet Walker said.
There will be a restaurant, little pocket parks, and a pond. [It will be a] whole new atmosphere right in the middle of this urban community.” Also according to Prophet Walker, Posterity Heights will boast the city’s first solar farm, with enough energy to not only serve the 28-acre campus but “put energy back on the grid.”
Posterity Heights will be replete with large spaces. “We were thinking of education. We wanted the child to be able to see their parents in their educational process and have the parents be available for the child,” Prophet Walker.
“Just because they are affordable homes, doesn’t mean they have to be cheap. We wanted them to be quality and they are.”
To apply for an education slot at Posterity Heights’ Scholar House, or if interested in becoming a tenant, call 260.745.JOSH for an application, hit up joshuashand.org, or email info@joshuashand.org.
Future issues of the FWIS will cover more of the history and subsequent phases of the Posterity Heights project.
