U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin gave life to plans for
a new East Side community center by securing a $750,000 federal
grant, but his choice of the Boys & Girls Club of Springfield
to oversee the project has rankled some key community leaders.
The Rev. Samuel Hale and the Rev. Silas
Johnson, leaders of the Springfield Ministerial Alliance, which
represents more than two dozen churches on the East Side, are in
the process of forming their own nonprofit foundation to oversee
the project.
It was the Ministerial Alliance, they say,
that initiated the project back in October 2003, helped file the
formal request for federal funding in March 2004, and brought
dozens of community groups, including the Boys & Girls Club,
into the fold.
They say the decision to hand the reins over
to the Boys & Girls Club came as a shock.
“It’s an injustice to the
community and to Ministerial Alliance,” says Hale, pastor of
Zion Missionary Baptist Church and co-chairman for the community
center’s executive steering committee.
“We spearheaded this whole operation
and brought community groups together,” he continues.
“To find out it’s being supplanted by the Boys &
Girls Club presents a real dilemma.”
Boys & Girls Club representatives have
attended meetings to discuss the new community center for the last
year. But it wasn’t until last month that the
organization’s prominent role in the project became known.
A Durbin representative “formally
asked” the Boys & Girls Club to lead the project in early
February, just days before the senator made the funding announcement,
according to Kristin Allen, executive director for the Boys & Girls
Club.
“Finalizing the decision to lead the
center did happen very fast,” Allen says, “but
it’s my perception that it was done in the open.”
Hale complains that the Ministerial Alliance
and the community center’s executive steering committee were
kept in the dark.
“All credibility and confidence has been
lost,” Hale says.
Bill Houlihan, Durbin’s downstate
director and the point man on the community-center project, insists
that the ministers were kept informed.
Houlihan says that the Boys & Girls Club
is a perfect fit for the project. The organization’s long
legacy of community service, he says, will likely ensure more
federal and state funding.
“The Boys & Girls Club is something
that people in this community know,” Houlihan says.
“Why create another foundation when we already have one?”
Last March, Hale, Johnson (pastor of Calvary
Baptist Church), and other members of the community center’s
executive steering committee founded the Community Center
Foundation of Springfield to accept and administer funds for the
project. Their application for tax-exempt status is pending with
the Internal Revenue Service.
“The Community Center Foundation is
something they formed with no approval from Sen. Durbin,”
says Houlihan.
Hale argues that establishing a new
foundation is critical to “keeping the community in control
of the community center.”
Initially, he says, the Boys & Girls Club
was to be just one of many local agencies that would help anchor
the project and offer programs at the center. Hale fears that its
new leadership role will limit the kinds of services that are
offered because the organization works almost exclusively with
youths.
Allen promises that the project will be
inclusive and hopes to smooth relations with the leaders of
Ministerial Alliance. The two groups plan to meet on Monday.
“We hope we’re accepted in this role
of leading the project,” Allen says. “As we work with the
ministers, any concerns they may have will be resolved.”
Allen adds that it “has not been
determined” whether the Boys & Girls Club will close its
current sites, including the main branch at 15th and Monroe
streets, when the new community center opens.
Hale and Johnson, meanwhile, may still
establish their own foundation to rival the project’s current
leadership. They have invited Houlihan to attend the next
Ministerial Alliance meeting, set for Saturday morning, to discuss
these issues.
Whatever the outcome, both ministers say, they
plan to remain leaders in the effort to build a much-needed
community center on the city’s East Side.
“We would not forego the project,”
says Johnson.
The goal is to build a roughly $4 million,
40,000-square-foot building, modeled after the Patriots Gateway
Community Center in Rockford, where a wide range of programs for
youths, adults, and seniors would be offered.
The federal funding will be used to choose and
purchase a site and design a structure. The American Business Club
ponied up the first major private donation to the project last
week, promising $250,000 over the next five years.
The need for a new community center was
established in 2002, after the city of Springfield commissioned a
report that cited a lack of public parks, recreational buildings,
and job- and educational-training programs in the area.
This article appears in Mar 3-9, 2005.
