The Guam Housing and Urban Renewal Authority (GHURA) is looking to acquire a former Catholic school facility that shut down last year.

GHURA plans for the facility to serve as an incubator space for non-profit organizations and a one-stop social services center.

“Strengthening families and building communities one project at a time.”

Guam Housing and Urban Renewal Authority continues their mission with plans to purchase the former San Vicente Catholic school facility in Barrigada.

GHURA Deputy Director Fernando Esteves told KUAM in a phone interview, the goal is to provide a brick and mortar incubator space for up and coming non-profit organizations.

Esteves said, “What we could do to foster additional growth and development. Or spur new non-profits coming up or smaller ones that need assistance, kind of like an incubator space. You may see this with what CHamoru village was intended to be, a business incubator. What we want to create is a non profit social services type incubator.”

Esteves says with local nonprofits stretched thin coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic and Typhoon Mawar, the project would help NGO’s utilize federal grants to its max potential, in turn helping the community.

GHURA is planning for the central facility to be an accessible one-stop center where the community can go to obtain much needed social services.

“So when San Vicente came up, we were able to look at what it had to offer in terms of physical space, considering the potential for growth, maybe for other services we would like to include in the future, and what the general structure of the facility was,” He said.

The former campus is on the market after closing its doors for good last August due to a severe drop in student enrollment.

No word on what the asking price is, but GHURA will use federal monies under the community Development Block grant to put out an offer.

Esteves continued, “The general rule is that its government funds still. We can only pay up to fair market price. So that's going to require an additional appraisal, it has to be concurrent, we are going to have to conduct an environmental assessment and do all our legal review. So there’s a lot that goes into this.”

While they’re not reinventing the wheel with this concept, Esteves said, “Surprisingly when we were coming up with this concept and looking into it, we discovered there’s actually a facility like this open in Hawaii that’s been open for a while.”

It will be the first of its kind locally.