Projects
POTENTIAL ADAPTIVE REUSE
Walton & Geary Schools
Acquisition Dependent
Returning Community Assets to Productive Use
Walton and Geary are two former school properties in Roane County that Agape is interested in acquiring for adaptive reuse. Agape does not currently own or control either property, and any project depends on their availability, acquisition, funding, and feasibility.
The opportunity is larger than preserving vacant buildings. Schools were built as community assets, with land, infrastructure, gathering space, and decades of public investment already embedded in them. Adaptive reuse asks whether those existing assets can serve a new purpose rather than remain vacant or be lost to deterioration.
Agape is evaluating Walton and Geary individually because the properties are different. The goal is not to force the same program into both buildings, but to determine how each property could best contribute to housing, economic opportunity, and community life.
Building Evidence That Will Travel
Agape's long-term goal is not simply to complete individual projects. Each project is an opportunity to learn what works, what does not, what it costs, and what conditions make success more likely.
As that evidence develops, Agape will apply what it learns to additional properties and communities. Replication does not mean copying the same project from one place to another. It means carrying forward the principles, methods, and evidence that work while adapting each application to the people, assets, needs, and opportunities already present..
Growth will depend on results, resources, partnerships, and community readiness rather than a predetermined geographic timetable. Agape intends to expand when the evidence supports expansion, not simply because a calendar says it is time.
NEAR TERM
Single-Family Housing
Funding & Acquisition Stage
Building Housing One Home at a Time
Agape's near-term housing strategy begins at a manageable scale: acquiring existing single-family properties that can be rehabilitated and returned to use as quality, affordable rental housing.
These early properties can provide the first real-world setting for the Tenant Stability Program. Each home gives Agape an opportunity to test the model, measure results, learn from experience, and improve the approach before attempting it at a larger scale.
Rehabilitation also creates opportunities to use Agape's resources responsibly. Depending on the needs of each property, Agape can seek volunteers, donated services and materials, and partnerships with educational, apprenticeship, and workforce programs for appropriate portions of the work. This can reduce rehabilitation costs while creating hands-on opportunities to learn, contribute, and build skills.
As resources allow, revenue from operating properties can help support continued investment and expansion.
Geary School
Walton School
Geary School offers potential for a more residential form of adaptive reuse. The building's size, layout, and location create an opportunity to explore housing that makes productive use of a substantial existing community asset.
Agape is particularly interested in whether Geary could support a mix of workforce and multigenerational housing. The property is approximately five miles from I-79, placing residents in rural Roane County while providing a practical commuting connection toward Charleston. That creates an opportunity for housing to support repopulation as well as stability, bringing households into the community while keeping larger employment markets within reach.
Residential use could also connect with the Tenant Stability Program, financial capability resources, and partnerships that help residents build and maintain long-term stability.
As with Walton, the final use would depend on acquisition, feasibility, community input, partnerships, and funding. The goal is not simply to fill a vacant building. It is to determine whether Geary can become a place where housing, economic access, and community stability reinforce one another.
Walton School offers a different kind of adaptive-reuse opportunity. Its location, acreage, existing infrastructure, and proximity to the Pocatalico River create potential for economic and community uses rather than residential development.
Agape is exploring how the property could support shared workspace, small-business and workforce activity, community uses, and connections to the region's growing remote-work and outdoor economy. Because portions of the property are within the regulatory floodplain, any future plan would need to work with that constraint rather than ignore it. Flood mitigation, environmental improvements, and productive community use may themselves become reinforcing parts of the site's design.
The specific uses will depend on acquisition, feasibility studies, community input, partnerships, and funding. The goal is to discover what Walton can become based on the assets and constraints already present there.
LONG TERM
Replication & Expansion
Evidence-Driven Growth
Turning Agape's Approach Into Practical Work
Agape's work is designed to develop in stages. Early projects can create housing, test programs, strengthen partnerships, and generate evidence that informs larger opportunities.
Some projects can move forward when funding and appropriate properties are available. Others depend on acquisition, feasibility, partnerships, or additional resources. The specific opportunities may change. The approach remains adaptable by design.
Help Build What Comes Next
Agape's projects will grow through people willing to contribute resources, time, knowledge, relationships, and ideas.