Private group steps in to save Carrboro thrift shop just days before foreclosure sale
A local foundation has stepped in to buy CommunityWorx, heading off a December foreclosure sale and keeping the doors of the 72-year-old thrift shop open in Carrboro.
Shared Visions Foundation Inc., a private foundation housed on Murphy School Road, has agreed to pay $4.2 million for the 1.5-acre property at 117 and 125 W. Main St., founder Jay Miller said.
“I’m excited for them,” he said. “I’ve become more interested in it as I got to know them a little better. Obviously, they’ve had a tough time, and they’ve had to reorganize.”
The deal is less than the $4.7 million sales price that was advertised, but it will allow CommunityWorx to lease the three-story thrift shop and the YouthWorx on Main building next door.
YouthWorx, which leases affordable space to nonprofit groups serving young people, could expand into the thrift shop’s third-floor offices, CommunityWorx President and CEO Barbara Jessie-Black said.
An Orange County judge had given the nonprofit until Dec. 3 to find a buyer and stave off a foreclosure sale. CommunityWorx still owes about $4 million for loans that paid to replace the original thrift shop and add the YouthWorx building.
CommunityWorx still needs $120,000 to cover real-estate closing costs, which includes fees, taxes, rent and a security deposit, Jessie-Black said. The fundraising campaign had generated $25,000 by Monday, she said.
Jessie-Black did not respond to a question about what happens if CommunityWorx doesn’t raise the money.
“We are privileged to have Shared Visions as a collaborator in this effort to empower CommunityWorx’s mission and consider Jay an ally in our work with underestimated communities, due to his involvement as a board member of one of our long-time community partners, Inter-Faith Council for Social Services,” Jessie-Black said in a news release.
Miller told The News & Observer that he hopes the sale will allow Shared Visions to serve even more nonprofit organizations and also help stabilize CommunityWorx and YouthWorx. The deal has some risks, but he feels “pretty positive” about it.
“We are hoping that the combination of my experience in commercial real estate and our foundation’s willingness to try to do this kind of work will allow them to survive,” he said. “That’s the main thing we’re all trying to accomplish.”
Leveraging partnerships to do more
Miller started Shared Visions with proceeds from the 2002 sale of six Music Loft retail stores, including a popular Carrboro store that closed in 2017. He is now co-owner of Miller Property Management in Durham, a commercial real estate firm that gives 20% of its profits to Shared Visions.
With those grants and other investments, Shared Visions supports dozens of Orange and Durham County nonprofit groups, leasing affordable office space to three groups at the historic Murphey School, on the Durham-Orange county line. Miller restored the mostly abandoned school, built in 1923, before signing the deed over to Shared Visions in 2015.
His nonprofit also leases a few affordable homes to local residents, and Miller is active in the Orange County nonprofit world, serving on campaign committees for the Inter-Faith Council for Social Service and for Club Nova. Both agencies, located in downtown Carrboro, completed successful building campaigns in recent years.
Miller also serves on the board of the IFC, which work with CommunityWorx to provide homeless and low-income residents with vouchers to buy clothes and furniture at the thrift shop. IFC board members have worried about losing the partnership, he said.
While Shared Visions supports some of the nonprofits housed at YouthWorx, Miller said he only recently visited the thrift shop, which will be used as collateral for the loan to buy the property. Shared Visions will use rent payments to repay the debt, he said.
“We needed to be involved in such a way that we didn’t have to sell the assets that we have to get this done,” Miller said.
PTA Thrift Shop to CommunityWorx
▪ 1952: The PTA Thrift Shop begins selling second-hand goods on West Franklin Street in Chapel Hill to support the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools.
▪ 1979: PTA Thrift Shop finds a permanent home in Carrboro. A second store opens in 1980 on South Elliott Road in Chapel Hill.
▪ 2011: The thrift shop gives $265,000 to the local PTAs — its last regular donation before launching a 2012 building campaign.
▪ 2016: A rift with local PTA officials and residents widens after years of little or no support, a shift from volunteers to paid employees, and changes to thrift shop bylaws and PTA involvement. PTA Thrift Shop reports grants totaling $158,655 between 2012 and 2019.
▪ 2019: The organization’s name changes to CommunityWorx as part of a settlement with National PTA.
▪ 2020: CommunityWorx defaults on two loans before the pandemic forces its stores to close. The Chapel Hill store never reopens.
▪ 2023: CommunityWorx defaults again, and the bank sets a deadline to pay the debt or sell the property. The buildings are listed for sale in December. Available tax returns only showed a profit in four of the last 11 years, with 2023 ending in a total loss of $425,472.
▪ 2024: The bank starts foreclosure proceedings. Jessie-Black tells The N&O she has no regrets about the decisions that were made, because she and the board made the best choices possible based on the information they had at any given time.
