In the sweltering heat at Keach Park, Project STORY summer campers seek any shade they can get. When it rains, Charm Emiko has no choice but to cancel the free camp for the day.

From the fields, Emiko’s campers can see the nearby City Wide Community Center – with air-conditioned classrooms, a gym and proper bathrooms – but Project STORY can’t access the space due to high rental costs and city-run camps using it during the summer.

“It’s a shame because there is this beautiful community center literally right there,” she said. “There’s just been a lot of barriers put up that make it extremely difficult for us to even enter the building.”

After the City Wide Community Center opened in June 2018, city leaders talked about how to make the facility on the Heights, Concord’s most diverse neighborhood, more accessible. In 2022, City Council voted to reduce rental fees and, since then, data shows that more people have used it.

Still, some residents — whose advocacy helped drive the fee change two years ago — say the rental process puts what’s meant to be a shared space out of reach for those who need one the most. They see renting the center as a clear equity issue that city leaders could address.

To city leaders, though, increasing access to the center has to be balanced with the need to collect revenue to run the facility.

“What is the harm in letting the community use the space for free?” Emiko said. “Taxpayers pay the money, what is the harm?”

Fee review

A few years after the city opened the City Wide Community Center on the Heights, then-Mayor Jim Bouley formed a temporary committee to review all different types of fees charged by the city, including the rates to book space at the new facility.

In meetings, chaired by then-city councilor Byron Champlin, the committee began examining the accessibility of spaces in Concord and equity in the community.

The City Wide Community Center offers classroom space, a gym and auditorium in the former Dame School. During its meetings, residents and nonprofits told the committee that the rental rates at the center were too high and they could not afford to reserve space.

Some pushed for the fee to be dropped almost entirely, but the committee members worried that removing any fee would lead to no-shows and a lack of accountability for the space.

In the end, the committee settled on dropping rental fees for residents significantly: from $45 to $15 per hour for meeting rooms and from $100 to $25 for the auditorium.

“We talked through what would be a reasonable fee that would ensure that people if they were going to reserve the space, would actually show up, but at the same time, wouldn’t be too high,” said at-large Councilor Nathan Fennessy, who sat on the fee-review committee. “So that groups would be encouraged to use the space on a regular basis.”

A variety of groups book space in the center, from political organizers to community nonprofits. In the summer, Concord’s Parks and Recreation Department runs camp from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday.

For their stay-and-play camp — a traditional summer camp for kids in grades 1 through 5 – residents pay $175 per week.

Since September 2021, parks and recreation has been the greatest user, with 10,579 hours or 440 days booked through June 2024.

Free for one nonprofit?

Two days a week in a community center classroom, Second Start volunteers lead English as a Second Language classes, host a conversation hour with volunteers and assist with studying for naturalization tests.

The nonprofit, mostly run by volunteers, uses the center for free, thanks to a partnership with the city – the only community organization with this arrangement.

“We’re trying to offer free services, our people are volunteer tutors, we are a nonprofit. So we really wanted to see if they were willing to work with us in that realm and say, ‘Look, it’s a community center — we should be supporting the community’,” said Bill Mealey, the executive director of Second Start. “I am just glad to, thrilled to say that they completely agreed with us and supported that.”

The partnership started with 12 hours per week of free time. In June, City Council approved upping it to 15 hours a week.

“This program has been so successful,” said Champlin at the meeting. “I have met with some of the classes, I have talked to some of the adult students. They are very excited and very proud to be learning English.”

Other nonprofit and community groups see Second Start’s partnership as the model.

Groups can apply to have their fees waived by submitting a request to the City Council, but that process can take months. The request must pass through the hands of city staff, likely head to a City Council committee, and then the top governing body itself.

To Emiko, it is too cumbersome. She can’t juggle that process – and subsequent reports that are required – while running her organization, which is looking to become a 501(c)(3), as well.

Fisto Ndayishimiye, a leader with Change for Concord, agrees.

“For nonprofits and the community to work on community programs, they should be free. They should be able to access the community center for free,” he said.

For Ndayishimiye, the space should be a hub to promote diversity and inclusivity in the city. Since August 2022, Change for Concord has paid $232.50 to rent the center for 18 hours.

“For nonprofits or any community programs, the community center is the only space that is an accessible space,” he said. “The community center should be used for the community.”

Aside from Project STORY’s challenges in renting the space — including years-long conversations with the city that have yielded few results — Emiko broadly sees the center as an underutilized place for kids in the neighborhood.

For many New American families living on the Heights, the community center is in the heart of their neighborhood. Kids know the route to Keach Park. In the summer especially, they’re looking for an outlet.

Yet the center, and particularly its gym, remains off-limits to use for anyone without a reservation — even if it’s not being used for other programming.

“Just open up the gym, open up that common area for kids to go if it’s raining. A lot of kids, maybe they don’t have a safe place at home or their house is so crowded because there’s six or seven people living with them or because their parents are working they’re the caretaker all day,” she said. “It’s a really vulnerable time for these kids, so it would be great if they could just go across the street to the community center.”

Why the fees?

Since before the community center was built, groups have pushed for space to be set aside for the growing New American community. Given that the building is funded by taxpayers, others have also argued for residents to have free access.

The city charges fees for two main reasons. In addition to deterring “no-shows,” the revenue buoys the tax dollars that fund the facility, including its everyday costs and the $6.3 million the city bonded in 2016 to convert and modernize the former Dame School.

“We’ve got to collect some level of revenue to offset the significant expenses associated with keeping a building like that open,” Fennessy said.

Ultimately, the goal of the fee reduction was to make it easier for more people to use the community center more often. In that way, Fennessy said, it has been successful.

Since the fees were dropped, the number of people and groups renting rooms, and how much they use it, has massively increased.

In the year before the change was made, 31 different groups booked a total of 619 hours. In the first year after the change, 69 groups booked 1,282 hours. And year-to-date in the second year since the change, 101 groups have booked 1,691 hours. That’s before July and August, two of the busiest months were counted, according to Parks and Recreation Director David Gill.

Cash flow has gone up, too. Revenue from rentals this year is more than $9,000 ahead of where it was at the same point in the year before the change, according to comments Gill made to city councilors during budget talks.

Part of that growth is related to the pandemic, Gill said, but not all of it.

“We’re making it up in volume,” he said.

‘Where there’s a will, there’s a way’

For Jessica Livingston, director of Concord’s annual multicultural festival, the fee change was an example of equality — not equity: the rate was lowered for people who could afford to pay it where it was, and, while the lower cost helped, the bureaucratic process that sidelined groups remained.

City leaders point to improving the city’s diversity, equity, inclusion, justice and belonging as a priority — they’ve appointed a new committee to work on it. Livingston sees improving access to the community center for the organizations and events they are most proud of as an opportunity for Concord to walk the walk.

The city has far more experience and resources to access grants, she noted. And it frequently sets aside discretionary funds.

“It doesn’t always have to be like the city is just giving it to them for free. It could be ‘What can we do to support you? What is it you need?’” she said. “Where there’s a will, there’s a way.”

Emiko would take any partnership with the city for Project STORY programs – her summer classes are flexible and would benefit from use of the gym, classrooms or just access to the bathrooms and water fountains inside.

If the Concord Public Libraries can provide meeting spaces for free, she wonders what is prohibiting the community center from doing the same.

The use of the center, though, is emblematic of a larger conversation about community services and support for groups that do this work, advocates say.

“They don’t have particular outreach to our families or non-English native speakers… It’s really difficult for a lot of my families to participate in open gyms or sign-ups for camps or certain things because they either don’t know about it or there’s no translation,” Emiko said. “I’m hoping in the future we can work with the community center a little bit more in hopes that they can become a little bit more — a lot more — inclusive of everyone in our community.”

If Ndayishimiye could have his wish, community outreach and access would take precedence over revenue.

“We are irresponsible and we are not serving the community as we should,” he said. “We should have a leadership team that really understands those barriers very seriously and prioritizes people over whatever money.”

To promote diversity, and make Concord a more accessible and welcoming space, the city needs a center to do so, he said.

Like the decision to grant a request for free booking, any changes to how fees work are solely up to City Council.

While the community center can serve this purpose, Fennessy would argue it’s also intended to serve the greater population.

“Obviously, where it’s located, there’s a significant population that’s within walking distance that may have different needs than the people who live five miles away,” Fennessy said. But, he continued, there’s a balance. “It’s called the ‘City Wide Community Center,’ I think for a reason. It is intended to serve the entire community.”

To Emiko, the divide isn’t geographic per se, but more rooted around access.

“I see more of like, that separation of there’s people in the community that have resources, and that have cultural knowledge, and they can utilize the community center,” she said.

Still, Second Start’s partnership has allowed the nonprofit to expand its outreach to community members on the Heights. Mealey hopes that their model could be a blueprint for collaboration between community groups and the city.

“We’re trying to help our people,” he said. “But we’re trying to help kick the door open to using the community center the way it should be.”