The grant is $200,000, and Elizabeth City State University already knows where it goes: outside. The university in Elizabeth City, North Carolina is one of 10 colleges and universities nationwide selected for a 2026 Retool Your School Campus Improvement Grant from The Home Depot, and it will spend the money building an outdoor wellness park for students, faculty, staff and neighbors.
The park is the kind of project a campus feels every day. ECSU plans outdoor fitness equipment, walking and activity areas, seating, landscaping and wellness stations, with the final design built around accessibility, safety and long-term community use. The space is meant to host group fitness sessions, health education programs and wellness workshops, alongside the ordinary use that matters most, a place to move and sit down between classes.
Two Atlanta HBCUs are on the same list
ECSU has company it will recognize. The other nine recipients are Carroll College, Clark Atlanta University, Fort Lewis College, Gadsden State Community College, Harris-Stowe State University, Southern Connecticut State University, Spelman College, Victoria College and Xavier University of Louisiana. Two of the 10 grants land in Atlanta, at Clark Atlanta and Spelman. Each school received its own grant for its own project; ECSU’s $200,000 is not a share of a larger pool.
Angie Wills, the university’s director of Student Affairs Operations, tied the award to daily life rather than ribbon cuttings. “This generous investment will allow ECSU to create an outdoor environment that encourages healthy lifestyles, strengthens connections, and supports the overall well-being of our students and community,” Wills said. Nicholas Sanders, director of Campus Recreation and Wellness, called it “a transformative investment” in campus recreation “for many years to come.”
The foundation reads it as belonging
LaDaniel Gatling II, executive director of the ECSU Foundation, framed the grant in wider terms. “This grant represents more than an investment in a physical space; it is an investment in health, belonging, student success and the future of northeastern North Carolina,” he said. That framing fits the school. ECSU was founded in 1891 to bring a college education within reach of African American students in a rural corner of the state, and the park is open by design to the surrounding community, not fenced off from it.
Corporate campus money works this way at other HBCUs too. The Social Register recently covered Entergy’s mix of HBCU scholarships and facilities grants, where the buildings outlast any single class of recipients. A wellness park is smaller than a laboratory, and it asks less of the students who use it. Planning begins this fall, and construction is projected for August 2027. Full details are in ECSU’s announcement. By the fall of 2027, the class arriving in Elizabeth City will find the park waiting, built with money the university won before those students applied.
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