The City of Boston and the Boston Centers for Youth and Family (BCYF) held a virtual meeting on the Jackson Mann Community Center in Allston last week.

The meeting was a way for the city to check in and share its findings from its previous survey, as well as share that there is another survey asking for further detail: https://gvimes.link/jcksnmnnsrvy2

City of Boston Deputy Chief of Operations Patricia Cafferky said the reason for the new survey is to hone down the responses from the last one and create a priorities list so the city can move on and rebuild the community center.

For those new to the discussion, the Jackson Mann Community Center is in serious disrepair, and the city has tried to close it several times. Community members rallied for the center each time, despite services being moved to other locations to accommodate the loss of the center, the building was shored up and services moved back in.

But the building is falling apart. So the City started the planning process for a new building a few years ago and this past summer, announced that it was looking for community input on the site. The site used to house two schools, the Jackson Mann K-8 and the Horace Mann School for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing. Jackson Mann was shut and its students moved throughout the district and Horace Mann moved to Charlestown. So now there’s a lot of extra space over there, and the city is asking residents whether they want a new school with the community center, new housing with the community center, or all three.

Cafferky warned however that the process will not make everyone happy.

“Something the surveys made very clear, is that Allston-Brighton community isn’t a monolith,” she said. “It really shows that there is not going to be one perfect answer as to what happens on the Jackson-Mann site that makes everyone happy. So as we work towards consensus, it’s also important to call out that complete universal agreement is probably not possible, unsurprisingly.”

Cafferky showed several different responses from the survey arguing seeming opposite points. One respondent said, “Parking is a MUST!! A garage or underground parking garage would be ideal,” and another said “I hope any housing has minimal wasted space on parking, since it is well resourced by buses.” Another resident stated: “It needs to be a school,” and another “I recognize we need schools as well, but that funding woul dbe better served investing in existing schools.”

Cafferky said the first survey had more than 554 respondants.

While Cafferky said the most popular option for the community center was a center with housing – some of the pitch there is that the housing will help pay for the community center making the project more feasible on the funding side of things – the second most population, by seven votes, was with a school. The other option was for just a community center, and several residents spoke in favor of this option, as they seemed to think adding the housing would complicate and possibly delay the community center.

“This meeting is supposed to be about a community center,” said resident Thomas Lally. “Why are we throwing in housing into the mix? Allston-Brighton as a community has seen a massive amount of development, and I believe we have done enough for the city as far as housing goes. Let’s just focus on getting ourselves a prime community center with the bells and whistles that many other community centers have.”

The logic for the other uses was, Cafferky said, because there is so much space on the site, as there are two fewer schools there now. But Lally said it could be better utilized.

“So that could mean more parking,” he said. “Maybe a gym, but Allston-Brighton has been pretty much ignored as far as this goes, and to confuse the issue with housing I think is counter productive.”

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And parking there is an issue. Current Jackson Mann Director Rosie Hanlon said the spaces for the community center get utilized every night.

“Many people come here and utilize the parking, need the parking,” she said. “Our parking is filled every single night because we have people utilizing the recreation and ESOL (English for speakers of other languages) year-round. We have a lot to build and these ideas that come in will make it greater and stronger.”

Hanlon said there were several great ideas for the community center discussed during the meeting and suggested residents keep harping on those ideas in the next survey, because this is the only BCYF community center for District 9, which has about 80,000 residents.

“We have so many needs, childcare, infant toddler childcare is huge, and I think we as a neighborhood is an art stop, and looking at a theater, this was something at the community center that was utilized often,” she said. “The thing that we really need to realize is we are the only community center in Allston Brighton, serving a lot of people. So really lush ideas are great and let’s be able to bring and fill those needs.”

Speaking of childcare, resident Mairead Despagni said she used to work at the Jackson Mann Daycare and asked if that was coming back Cafferky said the BCYF no longer runs daycares itself, but rather leases out space to other entities for “a nominal fee.”

“I think the important thing here is that there is probably opportunity to make sure there is some sort of retail space that could be prioritized for childcare and then similarly have some sort of nonprofit partner that runs it,” Cafferky said.

The current timeline for the community center with housing would put construction starting at 2030, with the design of each element – the community center and the housing – taking place simultaneously to reduce time.

Officials said they are working on plans to keep the current community center offerings available during construction so that there is no interruption in services.

For the full project page, go to https://gvimes.link/jackmannproj