New Lehi community tackles housing affordability, childhood literacy

LEHI — Holbrook Farms resident Marie Wanlass said she had no idea a literacy center would be built in her community, but she was so excited for it during the grand opening on Thursday.

The Rippy Literacy Center has been operating in the city for more than two decades, but its newest location is something special — a resource center in a townhome community dedicated to providing affordable housing for Utah's essential workers: teachers, nurses, hospital staff and first responders.

"My daughter is struggling in school right now, so it's going to be very helpful for her," Wanlass said. "I just think it's amazing for all the kids that are struggling to have a resource close by and that's a lifesaver as a mom to have peace of mind that there is help you can find."

The Clark and Christine Ivory Foundation approached the Rippy Center a few years ago with the idea of putting a literacy center directly in a critical workforce townhome community at below-market prices. The Lehi Literacy Center at Holbrook Farms is part of Innovations Park and will be staffed with tutors, books and reading resources.

"Our future depends on how we educate our children," Christine Ivory said.

Working in partnership with the city and the Call to Action Foundation, projects like Holbrook Farms are addressing "real community needs," she said.

"Reading to children is one of the most important components of having a literate society," Ivory said. "This new literacy center is needed and will establish a tutoring center right where people live and where young families are growing."

Heather Tucker, director of the Lehi Rippy Literacy Center, said she is so excited to have another location for the center, especially one further west to help the children who live in that area of Lehi.

"This is something really new for us; we have not typically been right in the community, but we are excited to be able to offer it here. I'm excited to help more kids," Tucker said.

The literacy center hosts a pre-kindergarten program for 4-year-olds, after-school and summer tutoring for math and reading for first through fourth grades and a volunteer program for older children to help younger kids with reading, all free for Lehi residents. Classes begin next week, and the center has already received positive responses from families in the community.

"Our mission is to be a place where readers and volunteers can develop the skills to become leaders," Tucker said. "Education, literacy and lifelong learning matter."

Clark Ivory, CEO of Ivory Homes and chairman of the Clark and Christine Ivory Foundation, spoke at Thursday's ribbon-cutting about the importance of innovating solutions to create affordable housing that is also water-wise and energy-efficient.

With housing prices skyrocketing in the last few years, Ivory Innovations decided to dedicate a portion of its community giving to housing affordability through building seven different projects across the Wasatch Front. Holbrook Farms alone has more than 200 townhomes built and priced for working families that are "increasingly priced out of the neighborhoods they serve."

"This is a great example of innovation at work that is making a difference in housing affordability," Clark Ivory said. As a replicable model, Ivory hopes other leaders across the West will follow the Holbrook Farms' example of building community through tackling multiple issues at once.

Gov. Spencer Cox also emphasized the importance of increasing housing supply in Utah and building in a responsible way.

"People have to have a place to live. It's truly core to who we are and how we thrive and survive as a species, as human beings," Cox said. "We're so happy that this is happening and that our kids and grandkids are going to have a place to live — that's going to make Utah special for generations to come."

Without education, however, Cox said the community suffers in many ways, making it crucial to support childhood literacy.

First lady Abby Cox echoed those thoughts, saying it is critical that literacy starts as young as possible, with parents reading to their children. In an age of social media, it's important to put phones down and pick up books instead.

"For quality of life and thriving, we have to have our kiddos reading again," she said. "A center like this is so powerful. We have to be able to come together as a community, see each other face to face, help each other and be that social capital for somebody else."

Cox explained that she has been blessed with a long legacy of women in her family who prioritize education, as her great-grandmother was one of the first women to graduate from Brigham Young Academy.

A literacy center like this one provides the opportunity for all to get an education and be literate, no matter their socioeconomic status. Even if parents don't have time to read to their children, volunteers at the center can help fill that gap.

"This is a community issue, it's a community problem and it takes a community solution. All of us coming together to help every child learn to read, be educated and thrive, and that's what this is all about," she said.

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