A New Home, A Shared Legacy: Grace Place CDC at Cedar Grove Baptist Church

There is something significant about beginning again in a place that has never stopped serving.

Grace Place Community Development Corporation and City of Grace Mobile Ministries are honored to announce that we have found a new home at Cedar Grove Baptist Church, located at 210 West Clark Avenue in Prichard, Alabama. For us, this is more than a change of address. It is a covenant — a deliberate alignment with a congregation whose legacy of community service spans more than a century, and whose witness to the people of North Mobile County has never wavered.

A Lighthouse That Has Never Gone Dark

Cedar Grove Baptist Church has served the Prichard community for over 100 years. Known throughout the region as "The Lighthouse," the church has stood at the intersection of faith, family, and community care through some of the most turbulent chapters in this city's history. Under the pastoral leadership of Rev. Sylvester Adams — who has shepherded the congregation for over 30 years — Cedar Grove has remained a steady anchor in a community that has faced extraordinary pressures.

Prichard's story is one of remarkable resilience. Incorporated on September 16, 1925, the city grew rapidly through the mid-twentieth century, reaching a population of over 47,000 in 1960 as the defense and shipbuilding industries expanded across Mobile Bay. Churches like Cedar Grove were the backbone of that community — providing not only spiritual formation but also social cohesion, mutual aid, and moral leadership during the years of Jim Crow segregation, when Black institutions were the primary infrastructure of community life.

The decades that followed brought significant hardship. The closure of Scott Paper Company and International Paper in the 1980s and 1990s devastated the local economy, triggering job loss, population decline, and the fiscal crisis that led to the city's bankruptcy declaration in 1999. Through it all, Cedar Grove remained. When families needed a place to gather, grieve, celebrate, and organize, the church was there. That kind of institutional faithfulness is not incidental — it is the foundation on which community renewal is built.

Why This Partnership Matters

Grace Place CDC was founded in 2018 out of a recognition that the communities of North Mobile County — Prichard, Chickasaw, Eight Mile, Whistler — needed more than individual programs. They needed an ecosystem: a coordinated infrastructure that could walk with families across the dimensions of education, economic development, and community health simultaneously.

After pausing during the COVID-19 pandemic and losing our original building to fire in 2021, we have spent the past several years rebuilding — not just our organization, but our understanding of what it means to be rooted in a community. That rebuilding process has brought us to Cedar Grove.

The alignment between our organizations is not incidental. Cedar Grove's century of service to Prichard represents exactly the kind of durable, community-anchored institution that Grace Place CDC aspires to become. Their commitment to family, their heart for outreach, and their history of opening their doors to the community are the same values that animate our three program pillars: the Dent Leadership Academy, COPE, and P2CW — Power 2 Create Wealth.

City of Grace Mobile Ministries, co-led by Dr. Charles Dent and Jabaria Dent, brings a complementary mission — discipleship, community care, and leadership development — that deepens the ecosystem we are building together. Faith and community development are not separate tracks. At their best, they are the same work, pursued through different but reinforcing expressions.

Building on a Legacy of Service

Prichard today is a city at a crossroads. With a population of approximately 19,000, a median household income of $35,331, and roughly 32 percent of residents living below the poverty line, the structural challenges are real and well-documented. But the city also has something that cannot be manufactured: a deep reservoir of community identity, institutional memory, and people who have chosen to stay and build.

Cedar Grove Baptist Church is part of that reservoir. And now, so are we.

Our presence at Cedar Grove is not a temporary arrangement. It is the beginning of a long-term investment in the people and neighborhoods of Prichard and North Mobile County. Through Grace Place CDC's programs, we will work to expand access to educational opportunity, mental health resources, financial capability, and homeownership for families who have been waiting too long for the kind of coordinated support that changes trajectories.

Through City of Grace Mobile Ministries, we will continue to invest in the spiritual formation and leadership development that we believe is inseparable from lasting community transformation.

And through our partnership with Cedar Grove Baptist Church, we will stand on the shoulders of a congregation that has been a lighthouse in this community for over a century — and do our part to ensure that light keeps shining.

If you are in Prichard or the surrounding communities and want to learn more about our programs, volunteer, or partner with us, we invite you to reach out. The work of rebuilding a community is not done by organizations alone. It is done by people — neighbors, families, leaders, and institutions — who choose to show up for one another.

We are glad to be home.