City of New Haven map
City-owned buildings slated to become community hubs.
The Elicker Administration plans to convert eight underused parks buildings into youth, senior, and recreation hubs — with programming provided by both city staff and nonprofits.
Mayor Justin Elicker, city Youth and Recreation Department Director Gwendolyn Busch Williams, and City Engineer Giovanni Zinn detailed those plans Friday at a press conference held outside of Coogan Pavilion in Edgewood Park.
Thomas Breen photos
Mayor Elicker (center) at Friday’s press conference.
Standing alongside city department heads and alders, Elicker said that this plan to renovate, convert, and put to more active use various city-owned buildings has been funded by part of the $10 million in federal American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) money that the Board of Alders recently approved for a mix of youth engagement initiatives.
These planned new “youth and community hubs” will be places for young people and seniors alike.
“They know it’s going to be open. They know there’s going to be activities for them. And they know it’s going to be a welcoming place,” Elicker said about the city’s goals for these sites.
He and Busch Williams stressed that city staffers won’t be the only ones providing programming at these community centers.
Instead, the city intends to partner with nonprofits that will use these city-owned spaces for free so long as they provide cost-free community programming, ideally for a minimum term of three months. They said each program should also serve at least 10 people.
City Youth and Rec Director Gwendolyn Busch Williams.
“You can be a well-established organization” that’s been around for 20 or 30 years, Busch Williams said, “or you can be an up-and-coming, mom-and-pop” nonprofit.
The city has opened a request for qualifications (RFQ) application process for nonprofits interested in running programs at these sites. The first deadline to apply is the “end of August,” Elicker said. But this will be a “revolving” application process, meaning that nonprofits can apply after the first deadline passes.
Elicker said that one of the most frequent concerns he hears from local nonprofits is that they want to grow their work, but they don’t have the physical space to do it. He said he also frequently hears from residents all across the city that there aren’t enough safe and engaging activities for young people to do. This plan addresses both of those concerns.
The eight existing city-owned buildings that the city plans to convert to community centers are: Coogan Pavilion, Barnard Nature Center, East Rock Ranger Station, West Rock Nature Center, Goffe Street Park community building, the Trowbridge center, the Atwater senior center, and the Salperto center.
The first three centers to open in this new, renovated, more active capacity will be Coogan, Barnard, and East Rock, because those buildings require the least work to renovate, Elicker said. They should be open mid-September. Busch Williams said that all of these sites should be up and running with new programming by the end of 2023.
City Engineer Giovanni Zinn.
Zinn said that every building requires a different level of work to fix up, from more “cosmetic TLC” repairs to deeper structural renovations. He said that all of them will ultimately have working public bathrooms, free Internet access, some sort of audio-video display technology, and improved heating, cooling and renovation.
Click on the video below to watch Friday’s press conference in full. Click here to apply to run programming at one of these sites.