Old State GOP Headquarters Finds New Purpose & Future With At-Risk Youth Program

(Source: MIRS.news, Published 08/11/2026) The building where Michigan Republicans once plotted campaign strategy, made voter calls and watched election returns is serving a very different purpose these days.

The Michigan Republican Party’s former Lansing headquarters off Seymour Avenue is now home to the United Mentoring Program (UMP), where Pastor Tracy Edmond Sr. and his staff work with at-risk youths, including those they hope to steer away from guns and crime.

Pastor Tracy Edmond Sr. and Karry Smith of the United Mentoring Program. Photo By MIRS.

The organization works with 12- to 19-year-olds and moved into the building in late April. For their summer program, juvenile court officers bring in 15 youths for activities Tuesday and Thursday, weekly.

Pastor Tracy Edmond Sr. and Karry Smith of the United Mentoring Program. Photo By MIRS. 

One of them is 13-year-old Josiah, who had contact with the police, although he hadn't committed a crime.

Josiah flopped onto the office furniture, eager to explain a structure he made out of dried spaghetti noodles and marshmallows. When he started elaborating on “weight distribution,” UMP Executive Director Karry Smith lit up.

Smith told him he was smart enough to be earning As and Bs when school starts.

"We have a wealth of volunteer mentors that come to programs like this, so they get to meet our children, and the ultimate goal is to start building relationships with these children that mean something. A lot of them have been abandoned. A lot of them have been promised over and over again, and left with nothing," Smith said. “If you're not going to school, you can be picked up for truancy. It doesn't mean that they've stolen a car or robbed a store…but the truancy – that is a gateway into other things. Because if you're not going to school, and you're sitting around doing nothing, trouble will find you.”

Four years ago, Edmond – a Southside Lansing native and the founder of Walk in Truth Ministries – was one of about 40 faith leaders contacted by an ex-superintendent of the Lansing School District to try addressing gun violence and other crimes among students. Now with a designated facility, Edmond looks to make UMP a countywide resource.

Today, the UMP has 12 full-time employees, as well as 25 volunteer mentors from the ages of 25 to 70. They provide mentorship to high school and middle school students in the Lansing School District.

It also provides life skills, career development and community service programming to youths supervised by the Ingham County Juvenile Justice Division.

Pastor Tracy's vision to add an arcade to the UMP's new facility, which used to be the Michigan Republican Party's headquarters. Photo by MIRS.

Former Michigan Republican Party chairs and long-time donors overseeing the trust that possessed the headquarters had spent about one year attempting to sell the building for $600,000 to $700,000. Major players in the transaction were Susy Avery, the 1995-96 chair, and Bobby Schostak, chair from 2011 through 2014, who was head of the trust.

Pastor Tracy's vision to add an arcade to the UMP's new facility, which used to be the Michigan Republican Party's headquarters. Photo by MIRS. 

MIRS learned that Edmond's church, located across the street from the headquarters, was asked if it was interested in purchasing the building for $250,000. Unable to afford it, the church was eventually offered to buy it for $100,000 in addition to covering tax and maintenance costs.

"They were here campaigning at one time and doing what they needed to do, but isn't it amazing now that it serves as a place of refuge, a place where we're building up young people?" Edmond said. "They are the future. They are the ones that will be voting one day."

Edmond explained how, by developing relationships, some of the young teens, over time, will hand over their guns.

"These guns are being hidden in probably grandmother's house or mom's house . . . sometimes they hide them under bridges or whatever, but they're getting them from adults, and now they're learning how to make them online," Edmond said. "We find guns all the time. Kids give us their guns, but they only carry them because they're afraid."

Michigan Republican Party's old “visitors & staff only” sign for parking remains after the party vacated the old headquarters site. Photo by MIRS.

He said it was about one month ago when a kid, around 15 years old, was fatally gunned down around Lansing's St. Joseph Park after midnight.

Michigan Republican Party's old “visitors & staff only” sign for parking remains after the party vacated the old headquarters site. Photo by MIRS. 

Smith and Edmond hope the Seymour Avenue building can be a place where youths at-risk of someday committing crimes, often with a history of being a no-show in school, can find love. Ahead of group programming, they put their cell phones away in a basket or on chargers.

There they can access snacks, shoes and clothes. The two also have plans to set up an arcade on the building's first floor, as well as a wellness room that will be equipped with pillows and sandbags.

However, Edmond did hang onto one political memento that Republicans left behind. It was a book containing the security and viewing plans for when President Abraham Lincoln's funeral train journeyed through Michigan.

The Walk in Truth Ministries purchased the church building across the street from the headquarters in 2019. When the church hosted a block party, Edmond explained that U.S. Rep. Tom Barrett (R-Charlotte), ahead of becoming a congress member, gave them a green-light to install inflatables on its lawn.

Furthermore, Barrett helped secure a $750,000 federal investment for the UMP.

Initially, the headquarters was purchased in 2006 for $930,000.

Public debate around whether Republicans should sell it surfaced in 2023, during controversial chair Kristina Karamo's leadership. The party owed a $509,009 line of credit to Comerica Bank, and Karamo had filed a lawsuit against the trust's governing body, attempting to gain control of the building and its future.

"It is bittersweet to lose a permanent office…I thought that the building gave the party a lot of stability from administration to administration, but I just think the disaster that was the Karamo tenure, we're still digging out of that hole," said Republican strategist Jason Cabel Roe to MIRS. "Just the maintenance on that building was, I think, just too much for the party's coffers."

Roe reminisced about high-points in the election cycle, when the basement was full of visiting staff from the Republican National Committee (RNC), the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) and other out-of-state groups that coordinated with the state party.

UMP Executive Director Karry Smith's office in the building that once was the Michigan GOP's headquarters. Photo by MIRS.

"We'd climb up on the roof. There's a little ladder that goes up through a crawl space to get up on the roof, and we would often do happy hours up there on a Friday," Roe said.

UMP Executive Director Karry Smith's office in the building that once was the Michigan GOP's headquarters. Photo by MIRS.

However, Roe – a consultant on Barrett's campaign, who similarly has roots in Lansing's Southside – said that Edmond's program is incredible.

“I'm really proud of what Tracy's built with it, but also the fact that it's right across the street from his church just makes it incredibly convenient for the program, and I think it's only going to help him grow that program and do even more,” Roe said. “Neither of us were people that probably were born into a constructive trajectory in our lives, and so it's fun to reunite with him, and it's fun to play a small role in helping him.”

Brian Szmytke, who's right now the Oakland County Republican Party's finance chair and senior advisor, was a 14-year-old intern when he first entered the building. His mom would drive him up from their Wayne County hometown, and they would eat at the nearby Wendy's.

During the 2014 election cycle, Szmykte described a dedicated bullpen of political interns, surpassing more than 25 people at one point. Upstairs was where the state-level Senate Republican Campaign Committee (SRCC) and House Republican Campaign Committee (HRCC) gathered.

Additionally, he described the "MRP TV" studio, where Cameron Pickford – the Michigan Senate Republicans' present-day media strategist – produced content during the "advent of YouTube."

"We had a whole studio down there: green screen, microphone, professional camera set up…where the chairman back then would give updates, and they'd put them on YouTube," Szmytke said. "We were so ahead of the time on that, right? You think about digital (and) video content now, and that's just so native. Everyone does it. You have to do it. And back then, we were probably the only state party in the country that was putting anything into that."

He described signs reminding people to close the doors fully to prevent squirrels from getting inside, as well as warning them not to feed the squirrels.

Szmytke said the individuals that he grew up with on Seymour Avenue have "been with me through the best and worst times of my life."

"I think while the building may be gone, we still have these great friendships," Szmytke said. "If it has to not be in our hands, I'm happy for it to be in the hands of a noble cause like at-risk youth…we took in so many young professionals and helped them develop into careers there in that building, and it's nice to see that in one form or another, that legacy kind of lives on."

Ronald Weiser, the party's chair in the 2010, 2020 and 2022 cycles, no longer has his last name on the building.

Because the building was paid for, Weiser felt like selling the headquarters was a mistake, "but that wasn't my choice because I had moved on."

However, he enjoyed the walls, covered in photographs of presidential visits. He also prioritized being in the building every weekday, driving in from Chelsea or Ann Arbor.

"The interaction and the camaraderie, all those things were lost. I mean, the people who were running for office, whether it be governor or secretary of state, attorney general, many of the state House and Senate members would come there and meet with us (or) meet with constituents there or have training sessions there," Weiser said. "There was a whole variety of things that happened there that can't happen again."