Laura Glesby Photo
The soon-to-be-resurrected Hill Cooperative Youth Services Building.
Plans to bring a former Trowbridge Square community center back to life took a big step forward as the Board of Alders formally accepted $1.5 million in state funds to renovate and reopen the Hill Cooperative Youth Services community center, formerly known as the Barbell.
On Thursday evening, the Board of Alders approved that funding, which the city will accept from the state Department of Economic and Community Development (DECD).
The approval means that the historic, crumbling former youth center at 160 Carlisle St. — formerly known as the Barbell — will soon be under construction, paving the way for a new community hub in the Hill.
The building has to be completely gutted and renovated due to hazardous conditions inside. The city has estimated that construction will cost $2.25 million; in addition to the $1.5 million in state funds, the city has allocated American Rescue Plan dollars to make up the difference. The building’s operations will likely be contracted out to a local non-profit, as officials revealed in July at a community brainstorming session for the forthcoming reborn community center.
Ward 6 Alder Carmen Rodriguez.
Hill/City Point Alder Carmen Rodriguez, whose ward includes the Trowbridge Square neighborhood where the soon-to-be-revived youth center stands, urged her fellow alders to vote in favor of a “much-needed youth and community hub” in the area during Thursday’s meeting.
Her fellow Hill alders — Kampton Singh, Ron Hurt, and Evelyn Rodriguez — stood up one by one to echo Rodriguez. “I stand in support of the Trowbridge Center,” each repeated. A unanimous approval from their colleagues came soon after.
“It’s history,” Carmen Rodriguez said of the building in an interview before the meeting. She described waking up at 3 a.m. some mornings, unable to sleep, researching the history of the Trowbridge mini-neighborhood as an integrated, low-income community in the 1800s and a stop on the Underground Railroad. She wants to make sure that the kids who eventually use the community center building are aware of that past, she said.
The project is “a revival of an icon in the Hill,” said City Engineer Giovanni Zinn. He said he expects that construction will begin sometime in 2023.
When that happens, Rodriguez told Zinn, “I want a paintbrush.”