SOUTH BEND — There are no pins or lanes anymore, but the former Beacon Bowl bowling alley is hoping to revive its place in the community.

It has been a project four years in the making, but now the Beacon has a new name and officially opened its doors to the community for a grand opening on Tuesday.

The Beacon is a 50,000-square-foot space that is offered to community organizations at a low cost. The idea is to foster partnership that will benefit the west side of South Bend.

The bowling alley closed in 2007 and was then purchased by Riverside Church. The church then turned, for community use.

“For us we found out that strategically the best way to impact this city was to establish a non-profit, so our church filed papers and set up a new 501c3 for that, pretty much after seeking advice from local residents, non-profits and local city leaders it was clear that a community center was the best way to use this facility to see transformation on this side of town,” said Keith Walatk of Riverside Church.

The facility is only in its second phase of completion which includes a gym for boxing and basketball and a space for church gatherings.

Jacob Titus is the director of The Beacon and he says the facility is already being put to use.

“The space this morning is being used by a South Bend schools program called Family Literacy, so it’s a GED training program mainly for single mothers, so they have class at one end of the hallway training for their GED and at the other end of the hallway their children have pre-school and kindergarten enrichment classes and they also spend time together in health family time,” says Titus.

The Beacon currently has partnerships with Riverside Church, South Bend Roller Girls and Hope Ministries.

In the next five years, they hope to bring indoor play area, classrooms and office space for additional businesses.

As of now, 27,000-square-foot unused space is still being mapped out while community members offer up suggestions for its use.

Source: WNDU