DURHAM – In the heart of Durham’s historically African-American Walltown neighborhood just north of Duke University’s East Campus, a non-descript, white-painted brick building with a rich and varied history will soon be the city’s newest entrepreneurship and innovation hub—AB Studios.
The project is the latest brainchild of Talib Graves-Manns, the serial entrepreneur, Black Wall Street co-founder, first Entrepreneur in Residence at American Underground, and former Executive Director of Raleigh’s Innovation and Entrepreneurship Center.
AB Studios will be a community hub and house programs designed to build skills and knowledge about entrepreneurship, technology, business management, and home ownership and retention. To accelerate AB Studios launch, Graves-Manns is seeking support from the community through a $25,000 crowd-funding campaign launched on Sept.13th on DirectlyTo, a crowdfunding website founded by Graves-Manns high school classmate, Alvin Kennedy, that specializes in directing funds to non-profits and tax-deductible projects. Any funding raised will help fund renovations, equipment, and the programs the building will house.
1307 Knox Street: From Grocery to Innovation Studio
Built circa 1930, the building at 1307 Knox Street spent most of its years as the neighborhood grocery and butcher shop, “Knox Street Grocery.” In the 1990’s, however, it became the backdrop for many of the criminal acts that plagued the community.
To combat the crime, Self-Help purchased and partnered with Duke to renovate the building in 1999, leasing it to local ministries and workforce development groups since. In early 2018, Self-Help released an RFP to sell the building to a buyer who would “use it in a community-serving manner befitting of its history and consistent with its zoning designation.”
Once he learned of the opportunity, Graves-Manns wrote a proposal and presented it to Self-Help and the community at the local church, St. Johns Missionary Baptist Church. With approval from members of the community, Graves-Manns proposal was selected and he was granted the opportunity to purchase the building.
It’s Personal: Graves-Manns’ History is Walltown’s History
Talib Graves-Manns
Graves-Manns has a long track record of success in designing and implementing programs and events to foster leadership and increase access to the entrepreneurial ecosystem for people of color. The programs and relationships he established in 2015 as the first Entrepreneur in Residence at American Underground laid the foundation for the startup hub’s efforts to diversify.
In 2015 he co-founded Black Wall Street, the non-profit that hosts the now annual Black Wall Street: Homecoming that brings all-star investors, innovators and entrepreneurs to downtown Durham each fall. After these successes, Tashni-Ann Dubroy, Shaw University’s former president, handpicked Graves-Manns to launch the HBCU’s partnership with the Carolina Small Business Development Fund that became the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Center.
AB Studios is Graves-Manns most ambitious and personal project yet though. He says: “It’s the culmination of my hard work and intentional work in Durham to provide access to people who would otherwise have a hard time getting it.” To launch AB Studios, he is leveraging and combining his experience gained through his work as a licensed real estate broker, serial-entrepreneur, and community builder.
The project is a culmination of his personal history too. Graves-Manns’ link to the neighborhood predates the Knox Street building itself. Graves-Manns’ great-great-great-grandfather, George Wall established the neighborhood when he purchased the first piece of property on a swath of uninhabited land and built the first house there in 1902. By the 1920’s, the previously empty land was filled with working-class African American’s like Wall, and Wall had become the neighborhood’s namesake. Some of Wall’s descendants continued to live in the neighborhood throughout the generations, and still reside there today.
AB Studios
Inside AB Studios – a rendering
Once renovated, the 1,300 square foot former grocery that Graves-Manns relatives used to frequent to purchase eggs and cheese, will be transformed into AB Studios. Graves-Manns envisions the spaces as a “flex” space, easily convertible that can go “from a Saturday coding class to a Sunday yoga class for the elderly neighbors.” The building will also have a few offices small business owners in the community can lease.
Remaking a part of Durham’s history – a rendering from AB Studios
Graves-Manns expects construction to begin mid-October and for the doors to open for programming mid-November. Most of the programming will be free and open to the public and each will be “intentionally created to create value and generational wealth within in the community,” according to Graves-Manns. He wants it to be a place “where you [residents] can come and get the tools you [residents] need to be more successful.” Programs will contain a blend of educational information on various topics, business acumen, and innovation principles. Programs will fall into four main categories:
- Small Business and Economic Development
- Home Ownership and Retention
- Technical Education
- Artrepreneurship
To staff the programs until the non-profit becomes self-sustaining and he’s able to hire staff, Graves-Manns will tap into the extensive network he’s built from across the country of entrepreneurs, investors, technologists, and real estate experts to donate their time. Graves-Manns says the programs will serve all generations of the community’s needs, and that “this [AB Studios] is also a place to bring the best and brightest in the community to lift them up and give them the resources they need to succeed.”
Graves-Manns is particularly excited to provide programs to educate the community on best practices for buying and retaining homes. Like many neighborhoods around Durham, Walltown is rapidly gentrifying. Gentrification brings opportunities for increasing or losing generational wealth for the neighborhoods’ African-American community. Graves-Manns believes the Walltown and Durham community at large would benefit from seminars and classes on retaining existing homes, purchasing homes, and sustaining wealth from “a place they can go to get unbiased information.”
It’s no mistake that the 20-day crowd-funding campaign coincides with Graves-Manns other big project, Black Wall Street: Homecoming ‘18. The two initiatives complement each other to increase access to the entrepreneurial sector for the Durham community and minority entrepreneurs. Graves-Manns says, “Black Wall Street happens for three days, entrepreneurs go back to their communities, and my phone rings all year with people looking to be connected to resources for building their business.” When it launches this fall, AB Studios will help fill that gap—offering services and resources for the Walltown community and Durham’s entrepreneurs to access year-round.
