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Eight months of remodeling have transformed a 90-year-old building on East Grand Avenue into a place where children play, people marry and neighborhood leaders meet.

Since opening in February, Lotus Moments Event Center has hosted several weddings, parties and neighborhood functions. Now the building’s management team hopes to attract more business people to the East Side with the opening of a conference center.

They’re also working to provide a clean and safe place in which residents can gather.

“It was an empty, bare warehouse that used to have big printing presses,” said Jason Brommel, Lotus Moments’ special events director, noting that the newly refurbished facility has potential to attract “a lot of people from all over the city.”

“We’re really trying to help that neighborhood kind of revitalize itself,” he said.

And with rental rates under $1,000 for a six-hour event, Brommel thinks the center, which boasts new hardwood floors, a tiled kitchen, restaurant-quality appliances, a custom surround-sound system and a dance floor, is competitively priced to get the job done.

New landscaping, a handicapped-accessible ramp and a hard-surface parking lot were installed last week. The conference center is expected to open in late April or early May.

There’s also potential to house artists’ studios or storage space. Eventually, Lotus Moments would like to convert the building’s remaining 13,000 square feet into a second banquet room in order to accommodate two events simultaneously.

Beyond improving the space to attract customers, however, Lotus Moments is most interested in beautifying and supporting the neighborhood in which it operates. The center has already become a hub for community events, Brommel said, referring to the Fairgrounds Neighborhood Association, which has been meeting there regularly since it opened.

“Bringing culture into a neighborhood is pretty important,” said Renatta Bolen, president of Lotus Moments. “People are always going to graduate, people are always going to have weddings, people are going to have babies. So why not have a nice community center?”