Meditation center finds new home in neighborhood restaurant

After a nearly two-year search for a larger home, Common Ground Meditation Center is purchasing The Diner Family Restaurant at 2545 27th Avenue South. The organization plans to renovate the old restaurant to meet its need to stretch and grow and yet remain in the Seward neighborhood.

The organization should complete its purchase of the longtime neighborhood restaurant in December. The subsequent $225,000 renovation is expected to be completed next spring.

“We’ve just been getting by,” said the center’s primary teacher and administrator, Mark Nunberg, noting that the new location will give the center nearly 3,000 square feet of space for a kitchen, library, office, multi-purpose room, and a meditation hall that will be twice the size of the current 400-square-foot room.

Growing pains
In 1993, Nunberg and Wynne Fricke, a dance choreographer-in-residence at the Minnesota Dance Theater, purchased the building housing First Step Dance Studio and began Common Ground Meditation Center. There a small group people did sitting meditations once a week. The community of members has grown immensely, especially over the past six or seven years. Now, there are more than 1,500 people on the mailing list and more than 240 people through the center during any given week.

City officials told Nunberg that, even with renovations, their current building would never meet city code. In the beginning, they were small and informal. But their growth made code issues more “real.” Also, they don’t want their off-street parking demands to affect their neighbors.

In 2004, The Common Ground Board began a building search and fundraising campaign. After looking at numerous buildings, they discovered in August that The Diner was for sale for $355,000. The building had everything Common Ground was looking for, including proper zoning, handicap accessibility and adequate off-street parking.

The group has raised more than $114,000 toward the estimated $600,000 cost of acquisition and renovation. Another $48,000 has been pledged to the project. They’ll need to raise another $158,000 by the end of the year to complete the deal.

Volunteer architect Rick Okada, who transitioning from his work in commercial architecture to designing spiritual spaces, is helping convert the Diner into a meditation center with Japanese-inspired architecture. “I am practicing on Common Ground,” Okada says. The design plans he presented to the Common Ground community in October won unanimous approval.

The front of the building will be gutted and new walls and systems installed. The entrance will be moved to 26th Street. There are already plans (and $30,000) for a $250,000 second phase renovation, including a new 1,200 square foot meditation hall expansion, an expanded multipurpose room and more gardens.

There are many advantages to the new space, not the least of which is a sense of ownership by the community, many of whom live nearby. “It’s good for the community to have their own space and own the center more directly,” Nunberg said.

He and Fricke will continue to live in the current building and have room for their parents and guests to stay. “We are so lucky to be in this neighborhood,” he said. “We feel so at home and welcomed.”

Letting go of the past
The purchase ends another community relationship that has spanned more than a half century. Opened in 1950 by Frank Hall, The Diner Family Restaurant leaves a legacy of nourishing the neighborhood with comfort food and camaraderie. Hall’s daughter Darlene Follese recalls Hall was fond of saying, “The food is so good, I hate to sell it!”

The Diner was sold in order to liquidate assets for Hall, who suffers from Alzheimer’s and been living in a nursing home for the last three years.

After Hall developed health problems, Follese brought him into The Diner three times a week for breakfast or lunch and to just hang out with his friends. Follese said her father was very helpful and generous to everyone.

When someone came to the back door begging for food, Hall told her a lesson Follese said she’d never forget: “You don’t ever refuse anybody any food. You never know if it’s the last meal they’ll get.”

Children would come in, “What can we get for a quarter?” Hall would respond, “You can get three cups of hot chocolate, with a bunch of whipped cream on top.” The kids would say, “Frank, you’re a good businessman. We’ll come back when we’re grown up.”

Follese noted that her father was a very good teacher and businessman. One saying of his that she found always worked was, “If you don’t know what to do, don’t do anything.’”

Hall and Follese were business partners, even though “we were like oil and water.” Hall would say, “We are partners in this. Once we agree on everything, we won’t be partners any longer, because you don’t need one.”

Follese had hoped that The Diner would remain a restaurant and carry on that tradition. As a Christian, she struggles with the idea of a meditation center there, but wishes Common Ground well.

She said the restaurant “wasn’t just food. It met [customer’s] emotional needs as well. They ministered to me as I to them. I was nourished spiritually and emotionally there. It was another home, and a home to so many of the customers.”

She wonders what will happen with the Burger Boy neon sign. “So many people thought it was Frankie. Its so hard to see that sign go.”

Still, she’s trying to follow Hall’s oft-told advice once more: “In order for me to get on with the future, I have to let go of the past.”