East Side's Kroc Center engages leadership team to move forward with $98M plan

The Detroit Kroc Center, one of 40 planned for across the country, is moving forward with its plans to put a $98 million, 100,000-square-foot community center in Chandler Park.

The center has taken a big step in its fund-raising by creating a four-person Campaign Management Volunteer Team. The group includes community leaders Errol Service, Kurt Tech, David Thoms and Carolyn Patrick-Wanzo.

Joan Kroc selected The Salvation Army as her steward of "trust" to construct Ray and Joan Kroc Corps Community Centers. The Detroit facility will include a recreation center, an aquatic center, athletic fields, classrooms, computer labs, performing arts training and rehearsal classrooms, a chapel, a community events hall, a food service area and administrative space.

Patrick-Wanzo is the director of planning for the state of Michigan's Department of Human Services. She is also the co-founder of the Carolyn & Mel Wanzo Charitable Foundation, a nonprofit created with her late husband, jazz musician Mel Wanzo, which provides scholarships in music and social work at Wayne State University, so she is keyed into many aspects of the Kroc Center.

Although the Campaign Management Volunteer Team is tasked with raising the daunting figure of $48 million, she is confident. "Who knows who we might be able to approach?" she says. "And if there are challenges to completion, then we at least we can do some brainstorming and make it a win-win for [the Salvation Army] and the Kroc Center. "We are going to make this happen."

Source: Carolyn Patrick-Wanzo, Detroit Kroc Center Campaign Management Volunteer Team
Writer: Kelli B. Kavanaugh