Episode 128 // Amanda Lebeck of Walnut Community Center
On today’s episode we’re with Amanda Lebeck, Chairman of the Walnut Community Center in Walnut, Iowa (pop. 747). Amanda shares how she and members of her community moved quickly to save their recently vacated school building and give it a new purpose and use, which now includes a fitness center, conference rooms, community kitchen, event spaces, two gyms, and even a bar. She talks about their foundation’s unique partnership with the city that makes this all work, as well as some of their projects and fundraisers. If you have a vacant school building or something similar in your town, this podcast is going to spark some ideas for you!
We can’t say enough good things about Amanda and the members of this foundation and what they’ve done with the Walnut Community Center. And what’s so impressive is that they’ve done all of this in under four years! Incredible work, guys! We can’t wait to see what you do next.
Growing up here, the school was the heart of the community. So to see the school not be here anymore kind of left a big hole in Walnut. And the Community Center’s kind of been a way to bring people back together.
— Amanda Lebeck
The farther we get into the project, the more the community supports and backs the project.
— Amanda Lebeck
One of my concerns was the building would just sit here and become an eyesore.
— Amanda Lebeck
Amanda recently shared a full video tour of the facility with our Cultivate community and it was amazing! If you are not a part of this group yet, now is your chance to join us! Cultivate is made up of small town entrepreneurs and leaders from around the country who are putting revival into action. Several times each month we learn from incredible people like Amanda about new ideas we can bring to our rural communities, and this specific episode is a great example of some of the things we get to learn about inside the group. We only open this group to new members a few times a year, and in honor of this episode, we are now open to new members for a limited time!
