Untitled Document
After a year during which funds and services were
sought for a proposed community center on Springfield’s east side,
two more partners have signed on to the cause, says Kristen Allen, Boys
& Girls Club executive director. Senior Services of Central Illinois and Springfield
School District 186 each voted earlier this year to join the Boys &
Girls Club in providing programming for the center, and Allen says that the
organizations are ideal for giving support to all community members. “We can all go out and build our own
center,” she says, “but if we can bring everyone together,
it’s more cost-effective and reaches people in a better
way.”
Construction funds for the center, which will likely
cost between $8 million and $10 million, have not yet been pledged, but
Allen hopes that partners will be able to allocate money from their
facilities funds in the next two years, before building begins. “Projects to develop the east side are
desperately needed, and we want to make sure that attention is given to
that need and dollars are directed to that need,” Allen says. The community center’s development committee is
still discussing the possibility of partnerships with several other
organizations, including Lincoln Library, the Southern Illinois University
School of Medicine, and the Springfield Park District, but the project will
soon move to fundraising in a private-sector capital campaign.
Allen says that the project’s leaders are
planning a feasibility study for July in which they will ask community
members to weigh in on the community center and disclose the monetary
support they would be willing to provide.
The site-selection committee will also soon make a
decision on the location of the community center, which has been narrowed
to four locations: south of Clear Lake Avenue, east of Ninth Street, north
of Stevenson Drive, and west of Dirksen Parkway. Allen says that money will be a main
factor in the committee’s decision, as the four sites vary in terms
of cost.
U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin and the Springfield Ministerial
Alliance first laid out the concept for the east-side community center in
2003, after the city of Springfield commissioned a report that cited a lack
of public programs in the area. Durbin asked the Boys & Girls Club to
lead the project in 2005. Since then, Allen says, the organization has worked
to establish a strong framework for what the center will provide in the
long term for the community. “This project, we believe, will really make an
impact on the quality of life of people in Springfield,” Allen says,
“particularly people who don’t have any other option for
services.”
Contact Amanda Robert at arobert@illinoistimes.com.
This article appears in Jul 5-11, 2007.
