Boston to Hold Hearing Over Uncertain Future of Jackson-Mann Community Center

The City of Boston will hold a hearing next month after years of pressure from local residents over the delayed effort to demolish and rebuild the Jackson-Mann Community Center in Allston-Brighton.

The center, which is located at 500 Cambridge St., has been scheduled for demolition since 2019 when the city decided the building’s poor conditions were so severe that it was not worth renovating.

But five years later, the dilapidated building still houses the community center and the city does not appear close to moving forward with the construction project. In 2022, the school that shared the facility with the community center was permanently shut down by the city because of the building’s condition.

In August, Allston-Brighton’s city councilor Elizabeth A. Breadon demanded the city hold a hearing to discuss the for neighborhood residents to demand answers from officials. The hearing will provide residents and affiliates with an opportunity to grill officials about the project’s delay.

Residents also remain uncertain about where the community center will relocate during the time that it takes to rebuild the new facility. Plans have varied from moving the center to Brighton High School or currently to a building on 40 Armington St. — directly behind the center’s current location.

In an emailed statement, a Boston spokesperson referred to a question and answer document on the Jackson-Mann website “that should address any questions” regarding “what is going on with the current location.”

The center’s staff still have no hard details on when they will have to move, or for how long, making it difficult to plan for the near future.

The city allotted several million dollars last year to design the replacement community center, but attached no timeline, labeling it merely as “to be scheduled.”

While Allston-Brighton teems with community organizations and nonprofits, few provide the centralized, round-the-clock services that Jackson-Mann offers to the neighborhood, according to advocates.

The center’s services include preschool, after-school, ESOL instruction, GED classes, sports like soccer and basketball, summer camp, and college and career assistance for teenagers.

The center also serves as a polling station for five precincts, a FEMA location, and, in the event of extreme weather, the only city-designated heating and cooling center in Allston-Brighton.

With the confusion over where and when the center would move over recent years, many of those programs have been disrupted.

On Jackson-Mann’s website, pages for preschool and afterschool simply say the programs “will reopen upon completion of the new Allston/Brighton Boston Centers for Youths and Families Community Center.”

The center also did not hold its annual summer camp in 2023 or 2024. Fall programming has also been disrupted for teenagers, which helps them create resumes and apply to college.

Staff were told to prepare to move out this summer. They got ready, but they didn’t end up moving – and remain in limbo now.

Though the city has allocated $1 million in federal Covid-19 relief funds to support the switch, John Pereira, a former volunteer at the center, said they cannot plan for the future with concrete plans.

The disarray has also left affiliates frustrated with a wider apparent neglect of their neighborhood by city services.

Though Boston has a total of 35 community centers, Allston-Brighton — which represents more than 11 percent of the city’s population — has just one center, the Jackson-Mann. The neighborhood also landed in last place this year when it came to allocating the city’s municipal budget, despite its size.

Rita Marrocchio, who serves as president of the community center’s council, said in an interview that the worst part of being left in limbo by the demolition plans is that it prevented the center from serving its local population.

“We’re there, and we can’t help people right now,” Morrochio said. “That’s my biggest frustration.”

“People don’t even know we’re there anymore, almost,” she added. “I don’t want to place blame — I just want to know what is going on.”

Pereira, the former volunteer, said that when residents are unsure of whether the community center is open or not, they go somewhere else or stop visiting altogether.

“When they don’t have this kind of assurance, they continue to look for other areas and even stop coming because they have no choice,” Pereira said.

—Staff writer Jina H. Choe can be reached at jina.choe@thecrimson.com.

—Staff writer Jack R. Trapanick can be reached at jack.trapanick@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @jackrtrapanick.