Citizens Plead for Teen Center

The Cambridge City Council last night asked City Manager Robert M. Healy to explore ways of bringing a teen center back to a building which has been owned for many years by the church which opened the first recreation center for teenagers in the country.

The council heard testimony from Healy, city officials and neighborhood activists, all of whom supported a plan to place a teen center in a gymnasium belonging to St. Mary's Parish. Councillor Walter J. Sullivan Jr. said the parish created the first teen recreational center in the country.

The gym stands on Prospect St. in Area 4 of Cambridge, the neighborhood north of Central Square. The church was forced to sell the building due to lack of funds last year, parish members testified.

A coalition of non-profit organizations and a community construction company with city funding had hoped to recreate a teen center there, but failed in their attempt to purchase the gym from the archdiocese, said Community Development Department Director Michael Rosenberg.

The Community Building Corporation, Inc., representing several non-profit organizations including Greenpeace, Resist and the Haymarket People's Fund, and the city-sponsored group, the Cambridge Enterprise Collaborative, both hoped to buy the gym when the parish offered it for sale, he said.

Rather than compete for the building, the two groups made an agreement. Under this agreement, the Cambridge group would use the gym for the teen center, and the non-profit groups would use the rest of the building for offices.

The group bid $700,000 for the Harvard Street building. City Manager Robert H. Healy said. But the archdiocese sold the gym to Add, Inc., a local architectural firm, for $1 million. "I'm not sure that all is lost," Healy said. "There may be a creative way for the city to provide a recreational facility."

`New Wrinkle'

Healy said there was a "new wrinkle" in the gym's status, in that the city might work out a settlement with Add, Inc. to would allow a recreational center in the gym. "There may be space now in the building," he said.

He referred to a "fast-breaking development on the St. Mary's facility, that as I imagine it, wouldn't require any funding," but he did not elaborate on this possibility.

Council members said they doubted that the two groups could have raised the money to back up their $700,000 bid. "It might have been anticipated that the public-non-profit coalition would be the low bid," said Councillor Francis H. Duehay '55.

Duehay called the bid "very imaginative and creative, but financially very risky."

The Councillors also said last night's comments were the first they had heard of the non-profit organization's involvement with the project. "We've had meetings about this several times, and this is the first time we've ever heard of these groups," said Councillor William H. Walsh.

Councillor Alice K. Wolf said she was unhappy with the council's treatment of the issue.

"I am concerned," she said. "I don't feel we are actively carrying out our expressed concern that is to see that this area gets a teen center," she said. "I don't think we should try to play both ways," she said. "We should really try to do it if that's what we think we should do."

Former City Council candidate Jonathan S. Myers called a teen center a very important priority for Area 4. "We need a boys' and girls' club in this city," he said. "Every summer we talk about the problems in Central Square," he said. "This is a solution for getting the kids off the street."

Area 4 desperately needs a teen center, neighborhood activists testified. Quoting the 1980 census, they said it has the lowest family income in the city and the largest number of female-headed single-parent house-holds, with 28 percent of its population below the poverty level.

The building was the site of the Cambridge Boys' and Girls' Club for 10 months, but the organization left because it could no longer pay the rent, a club volunteer said.

In other business, the council voted to ask the city manager to assist David P., Aline M., and Jill Sullivan in obtaining a new hearing from the rent board.

Councillor Saundra Graham was absent because of the recent death of her grandmother.