In early 2022, as fundraising for the Center for Black Excellence and Culture was in its early stages, Dr. Alex Gee lamented the lack of cultural grounding or space that feels like a cultural home for Madison’s Black residents, one that tells the story of their transcendence, survival, and perseverance.
“Those things aren’t told and when they aren’t, you don’t feel like a space is home,” he told IB Madison.
With today’s announcement that the center’s capital campaign has reached its $31 million goal for a fully funded, debt-free facility, Black residents will finally have such a space and perhaps local business operators will have more success in recruiting and retaining Black employees.
That’s not the main reason for pursuing this project, but it could be one of the ancillary benefits. The main reason, as Gee explained in a press conference and tour of the facility, is for Black Madisonians to have another space of their own to work, socialize, learn, and flourish.
The official announcement came on Juneteenth, which commemorates the end of slavery in the United States, and comes one year after ground was broken on the new center, located at 655 W. Badger Road. More than 500 people were in attendance that day, and the sense of anticipation for the center’s December 2025 opening is building as the finishing touches are put on the facility.
“There will be absolutely no debt on this facility, and I want to say that I did not raise that money — the community did,” said Gee, founder and CEO of the center, before leading a tour of the building. “The 700 Black community influencers who spoke into this project, our first 300 donors who were Black, the listening sessions, the architect, our advisors, our board — all came around and we made this happen.
“Most importantly, the broader community understood that this was important, not only to the vitality and the sense of flourishing for the Black community, but for our well-being, our mental health, and our physical health,” Gee said.
Getting down to business
Amid cultural amenities that include theater space and spaces for communal gathering and maker spaces, the center will have plenty to offer for Black entrepreneurs and professionals. Chief among them will be Black innovation space that will be technologically appointed for startup business owners by Abaxent LLC, the same company that provided wireless internet for Milwaukee’s Fiserv Forum.
It will be a space in which Black entrepreneurs can both work remotely, collaborate with others, and conduct Zoom meetings.
Jason Fields, the center’s chief operating officer, said that while the center is not technically a business incubator, it will have many of the same services and amenities. “The game plan is to have a series of resources and technical assistance,” he said. “We’re looking at partnering with financial institutions to talk about loans and grants and things of that nature to provide capital.
“It’s really a holistic approach where when you come here to be in the Innovation Center, you get a network of people you should connect with to grow your business with technical training and even potentially some capitalization,” Fields said. “But one thing we want to do is get everybody in the same place because what we found is when we introduce business owners to other business owners in our support system, they learn and grow together.”
Broader benefits
While the business-related amenities are designed for Black owned businesses, the broader business community will likely benefit in the form of greater retention of Black employees. During his career, Gee worked as a recruiter for UW-Madison, and while it was easier to bring Black professionals to Madison, the lack of community spaces and services for Black people made it difficult to keep them here.
Gee has no doubt the center will help address that for local employers, lenders, and institutions of higher learning.
“Since I was a kid, the rhetoric was that the Black community and their children couldn’t handle the rigor of the local school districts, of the educated workforce, and that blamed the victim,” Gee said. “The true issue is that many of us have come from places — my family came from Chicago — where it was easy to find a Black jazz club, book club, hair salon and other kinds of spaces.
“People aren’t leaving Madison because they can’t handle Madison,” he said. “They are leaving because they can’t handle the isolation and the pursuant health issues that arise out of those social determinants of health and well-being.”
Gee said there were some stiff headwinds for fundraisers, including pandemic-related uncertainty, unstable construction material and supply costs, and high inflation, but the donor community stepped up. Among the business donors were Ascendium, American Family Insurance Dreams Foundation, Summit Credit Union, which donated $2 million, and TruStage.
Earlier this month, Ascendium provided a second gift, contributing $626,000 to complete the capital campaign and ensure a debt-free opening.
With construction expected to be complete in late 2025, attention now turns to the center’s official opening.
Gee said fundraising would continue to support the center’s operation. “I do want the community to know that I want to be clear in stating, we have ended our construction campaign. We need to now pivot and start thinking about programs and building maintenance, but from this point on, there is no more money to raise for the facility,” he said.
“There is no bank that is lined up. We are good, and now my work with the rest of my team is to make sure programs are ready to run when this facility is completed in December of this year.”
Check out more pictures of the event:
