For years, First Lutheran Church in St. Paul’s Dayton’s Bluff rented its education building at 461 Maria Ave. to a handful of nonprofits like the East Side Elders program and Urban Roots.
Over the past year or more, the social service organization CLUES has gradually outfitted the former school building for new uses, including parenting classes, a weekly food shelf and privately run family child care rooms that will soon be operated by Spanish-speaking providers.
CLUES’ newly expanded business-incubation program arrived at just the right time for Evelyn Polanco, one of the four providers getting ready to hang their own shingle and open their own child care shop.
”It’s a dream I presented to God,” said Polanco on Monday, in Spanish. To offer child care, “the place where I live, it’s too