News

Opp House is about to embark on new chapter

A Superior Court judge was scheduled to hear details this week of a plan to sell the Opportunity House property to the city of Hendersonville and the Connections Center for use as center serving homeless people.

By Bill Moss, Published: October 24, 2023

Hendersonville’s Opportunity House, the senior center founded by volunteers that once boasted hundreds of members and offered a robust schedule of dances, card games, craft shows and civic events, is on the cusp of a second life that will serve a different segment of the population and fill a growing community need.

Attorneys and other parties were scheduled to appear via Zoom before a Henderson County Civil Superior Court judge on Wednesday to share details of a broad agreement to wind down the business of the now-dissolved nonprofit and potentially win authorization for sale of the property to the city of Hendersonville. Partnering with a new nonprofit organized to provide services to homeless people, the city has already drafted an agreement for lease of the building.

The Connections Center, which plans to operate a clearinghouse of services for homeless people in the building at 1411 Asheville Highway, would “provide services to the unhoused population and other persons in crisis” in the city and across Henderson County, a draft tenant-in-common agreement filed in the matter says. The agreement authorizes the center to lease space to other nonprofits that provide services to homeless people “in direct support” of the Connections Center’s mission. Any other occupancy would have to be authorized by the city. There are no plans to house homeless people overnight.

“That is a type of shared ownership agreement, in which the city of Hendersonville and the Hendersonville Connections Center are co-owners of the property,” said Rachel Ingram, executive director of the Connections Center.

Fair-market value of the 19,000-square-foot facility originally built as an A&P supermarket was appraised at $1.89 million in November 2022. The city set aside $800,000 in American Rescue Plan money for the Connections Center and also received a Dogwood Health Trust grant of $1.5 million in a joint application it submitted with the homeless services nonprofit. The Connections Center has numerous partner agencies lined up that plan to offer services in the facility, including Pisgah Legal Services, Safelight, Thrive, the Hope Coalition, the Free Clinics and Blue Ridge Health.

The receiver’s proposal calls for the sale of the property to the city for $485,000 — an amount that covers the debts the Opportunity Group has accumulated plus a cushion of about $80,000.

“It goes hand in hand addressing this growing homelessness crisis that not only we are experiencing here, but nationwide there’s this exploding crisis,” Ingram said. “And so that’s kind of the clever solution that we’ve come up with. They’ve got this $2.3 million earmarked for the Connections Center for homelessness and we needed some money to pay off the debts that are owed for that Opportunity Group property.”

Receiver appointed in July 2022

The end-game of the Opportunity House’s long suspension in limbo comes five years after the Community Foundation of Henderson County filed a lawsuit in civil court asserting that the Opp House was no longer acting as a valid nonprofit, nor serving the public in any way. The case dragged on for years without substantive progress until July 2022, when Superior Court Judge Peter Knight appointed John D. Noor, an Asheville attorney, to act as receiver. In a report to the court last week, Noor requested that Knight, in the hearing scheduled for this week, authorize him as receiver to guide the sale of the property to the city for $485,000, pay creditors from the proceeds of the sale and pay his firm $45,500 to cover the receiver’s fees and expenses. Attorneys the Opp House hired to fight the Community Foundation lawsuit would receive $47,700 if Judge Knight approves the terms Noor recommended.

Creditor’s expenses include:

• Henderson County property taxes, $152,742. (The county tax office revoked the Opp House’s tax-exempt status.)
• ASG Strategies and Graham Mew, an executive management consultant the Opportunity Group and executive director Ken Rhoads hired to sort out business and tax records, $98,677.
• NAI Beverly Hanks real estate broker Brian Turner, sales commission, $51,030.
• Roberts & Stevens, receiver John Noor and other law office personnel, $45,500.
• Ferikes, Bleynat & Cannon, attorney Edward Bleynat, Asheville law firm retained by Rhoads and the Opp House, $27,692.
• United Federal Credit Union, Ken Rhoads’s Visa card balance, $25,763.
• Wimer Snider, attorney Jake Snider, Asheville law firm retained by Rhoads, $20,028.
• Internal Revenue Service, past due 2017 and 2018 taxes, $10,976.
• Pye Barker, sprinkler system repair after pipes froze in the Christmas 2022 freeze, $5,266.
• ACE Appraisals, $4,200.

‘It’s been a great partnership’

The Connections Center has been supported by the city, Henderson County, Dogwood Health and other sources looking to find solutions to the county’s growing homeless and mental health needs.

“Before, we were looking at a different property behind Grace Blue Ridge Church,” Ingram said. “That was about 10,000 square feet whereas the Opportunity House is almost 20,000 square feet and so that opens up a lot more — I hate to use the word opportunities but a lot more options.”

The only current tenants are Flowers by Larry, which leases 1,900 square feet, and Wayne Boynton, who rents 2,950 square feet for storage, and they have been notified months ago that they’ll have to find space elsewhere.

The timeline for gaining possession of the property and completing design and renovation depends on this week’s hearing.

“The next biggest hurdle is getting through this legal process so that we can actually begin to work on it,” Ingram said. “We have done some walkthroughs with architects to try to start to make some plans about what it’ll look like but it’s hard to do much when it’s not ours.”

Ingram praised City Manager John Connet and the City Council for working with the Connections Center to move the mission toward completion.

“We just love the city. It’s been a really great partnership,” she said. “And it’s nice how we’ve been able to maintain our autonomy as a nonprofit. When we’re looking at the programming and the services that will be offered it’s not going to be very heavily influenced by city involvement. And so it’s just great that we’ve been able to reach that conclusion in that partnership together. So we’re excited about the future.”

-30-